SONGS OF CHALLENaE 



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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

An anthology selected and arranged 
by ROBERT FROTHINGHAM 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 
1922 



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COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



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AUG 28 1922 



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CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A 

©CLA6S1580 



TO 
ERMAN J. RIDGWAY 

** Yet always the aspiring Soul, — 
The Angel in the mortal clod, 

The Vision that defies control, — 
Will look through Nature up to God; 

And strive in word and form to speak 
The beauty it was bom to seek." 



FOREWORD 



Man has always been at war with himself, and 
every now and again he awakens to the conscious- 
ness that his discontent is divine. Then he turns 
in weariness from his greatest material accomplish- 
ments toward the "Happy Isles" of his imagina- 
tion. We all have our secret dreams, which gen- 
erally include a revolt against our own limitations 
and a longing for better things than those we know. 

"Whence" and "Whither" will ever be insepa- 
rable phases of the Great Adventure, as the real 
man views it. And, inasmuch as this compilation 
is meant for that particular breed, it will be quite 
apparent to him that there is no intent to "point a 
moral or adorn a tale," to either affirm or deny, 
and least of all, to constitute itself a moral or spir- 
itual finger-board. 

From the standpoint of the materialist, one of 
life's tragedies lies in the fact that so many of us 
know so many things that are n't so. Scarce one of 
us, however, but recognizes that 

** When the fight begins within himself, 
A man's worth something." 

Pin us down and you'll find that most of us be- 
lieve in our kinship with the worth-while things, the 
truly big things, "the stars which fleck our jour- 
ney's dusks." But it's like squaring the circle when 
we try to weave that belief into the warp and woof 



viii FOREWORD 



of our daily grind. The great majority of us are es- 
sentially religious — not theologically nor doctri- 
nally, and frequently not even intellectually. But — 
in the inner recesses of our spirit, where joy works 
alone, there is a glow Uke unto the fire of a moun- 
tain sunset of which the most wondrous view is to 
be had from the most distant range: our souPs 
intimate dream, human nature's Holy of Holies. 
Here, under an impulse, conscious or unconscious, 
to be free of laws and restraints, with the thousand 
and one superfluous precepts of poor, timorous 
humanity thrown aside, without the necessity for 
breaking our shins against the Decalogue or rub- 
bing our shoulders raw under the yoke of any partic- 
ular creed, we kneel to "whatever gods may be" 
and strive to play the game. 

Of all the lessons brought home to us by the 
World War, this reawakening of our relationship 
with the Unseen, with its consequent reestablish- 
ment of spiritual values is, perhaps, the most signif- 
icant. We needed to be reminded of the fact that 
man pays. He has always paid: for being born, for 
living, for dying. The principal thing that has dis- 
tinguished us from our early ancestors is that we 
have been trying to get too much for our money. 
We have been taking out more than we put in. We 
invited a crash and we got it. Praises be, however, 
along with it has come the Vision that is helping a 
lot of us off the treadmill: the Vision of the Spirit 
of Song. When a man can sing acceptably about 
either his belief or his unbelief, whether it agrees 
with what you and I think or not, we can afford to 
stop and Usten; in fact, we can't afford not to do so. 



FOREWORD ix 



Some writer has said that human needs are the 
true ligatures between God and man. How small 
vanities disappear and how vital stout sincerity 
becomes in the face of such a belief I 

There are a lot of men who claim to have no lik- 
ing for poetry, others who read it surreptitiously as 
though it were forbidden fruit, and still others who 
profess to regard a love for it as a sort of effeminate 
dilettantism. The very word "poetry" conveys a 
wrong meaning to some men. This little book is 
filled with robust verse, intended to appeal to the 
very men I have described. If it has any mission at 
all, it seeks simply to make vivid that Vision which 
pierces the murk and scatters our up-to-date cock- 
sureness to the four winds, and to restore to hearts 
grown callous and dour the inspiration and the 
warmth of the Spirit of Song: 

"Beholding dimly from afar the glory of the Hidden 

Face — 
Our worship ever our reward, the quest our golden 

coronal.'* 

R. F. 

New York 
October, .1922 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 



The editor acknowledges his indebtedness to the 
following authors and publishers for the use of 
copyright poems: 

Messrs. Angus & Robertson, Ltd., Sydney, Aus- 
tralia, for "Only Laughter is Sure,'* from The 
Australian^ and "Stars in the Mist," from Hearts 
of Gold, by Will H. Ogilvie; and "He Giveth his 
Beloved Sleep," from Rio Grandees Last Race, by 
Major A. B. Paterson. 

Mr. Richard G. Badger for "A Cowboy's Prayer," 
from Sun and Saddle Leather, by Badger Clark. 

The Bookfellows of Chicago for "Requiem" and 
"The Great Adventure," from Phantom Caravans, 
by Major Kendall Banning. 

Messrs. Chappell & Co., music publishers, Lon- 
don, and the author for "Hush your Prayers," by 
Conal O'Riordon (Norreys Connell, pseud.) 

Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. for "Nirvana," from 
Poems, by Rosamimd Marriott Watson; and "He 
fell among Thieves," from The Island Race, by 
Sir Henry Newbolt. 

Messrs. George H. Doran Company for "A Poet 
Enlists," from The Silver Trumpet (copyright, 
1918), and "Because I Have Loved Life," from 
Life and Living (copyright, 1916), by Amelia 
Josephine Burr. 

Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. for "The Awak- 
ening," from Poems and Portraits, by Don Marquis ; 



xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

and "Barest thou now, O Soul," "Passage to 
India," and "Song of the Universal," from Leaves 
of Grass, by Walt Whitman. 

Messrs. Duffield & Co. for "Wine of Omar 
Khayyam," from Mimma Bella, by Eugene Lee- 
Hamilton. 

Messrs. E. P. Button & Co. for permission to 
publish "The Bance of Beath," from The Collected 
Poems of Austin Bob son. 

Messrs. Forbes & Co. for "The Certain Victo- 
ry," from Ballads of the Busy Days, by S. E. Kiser. 

The Franklin Press for "He whom a Bream 
hath Possessed," from The Blossomy Bough, hy 
Shaemas O'Sheel. 

Messrs. Harper & Brothers for "The Seeker," 
from Dreams and Dust, by Bon Marquis; and "At 
the Top of the Road," from Star-Glow and Song, by 
Charles Buxton Going. 

Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company for "Make 
me no Grave" and "The Sun- Worshipers," from 
Songs of the Trail, by Henry Herbert Knibbs; 
"Waiting," by John Burroughs; "Live your Life, 
then take your Hat," by Henry Bavid Thoreau; 
"The Problem," by Ralph Waldo Emerson; "Bawn 
in the Besert," from Poems, by Clinton ScoUard; 
" lo Victis," by William Wetmore Story ; and " Room 
for a Soldier," by Thomas William Parsons. 

Mr. Richard LeGallienne for "The Second Cru- 
cifixion." 

Messrs. Little, Brown & Co. for "Coronation," 
from Poems, by Helen Hunt Jackson. 

Erskine Macdonald for "Courage," by the late 
Lieut. Byneley Hussey. 

I 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii 

The Macmillan Company for ** Atoms and Ages" 
and "Peace on Earth," from Collected Poems by 
Edwin Arlington Robinson; and "April Theology," 
"Prayer for Pain," and "When I have gone Weird 
Ways," from Tke Quest, by John G. Neihardt. 

Mr. Thomas Bird Mosher for "Tears," from A 
Wayside Lute, by Lizette Woodworth Reese; and 
"A Man's Bargain," from Tomorrow's Road, by 
Gertrude M. Hort. 

Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons for "Each in his 
Own Tongue," from Each in his Own Tongue, and 
Other Poems, by William Herbert Carruth; and 
"The Washerwoman's Song" and "Kriterion," 
from Rhymes of Ironquill, by Eugene F. Ware. 

George Routledge & Sons for "The Dance of 
Death," from The Collected Poems of Austin Dob- 
son. 

Mr. Porter E. Sargent for "A Man's Guess" and 
"The Question," from Miscellaneous Moods, by 
Elihu Vedder. 

Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for "Atoms and 
Ages," from Children of the Night, by Edwin Arling- 
ton Robinson; and "The Departed Friend" and 
"If this were Faith," by Robert Louis Stevenson. 

Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. for "The Lost 
Comrade," "Fear not the Menace," and "Scep- 
tics," from Last Songs from Vagabondia, by Rich- 
ard Hovey and Bliss Carman. 

Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. for "Before Action," 
from Verse and Prose in Peace and War, by the late 
Lieut. W. N. Hodgson. 

Messrs. P. F. Volland & Co. for "Each in his 
Own Tongue," by V/illiam Herbert Carruth. 



xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 

Yale University Press for "Hunger," from 
Shadow Verses, by Gamaliel Bradford; and "The 
Dying Pantheist to the Priest," from Poems, by 
Henry A. Beers. 

The American-Scandinavian Foundation for 
"Longing," by Viktor Rydberg; and "Prayer amid 
Flames," by Verner von Heidenstam, from An- 
thology of Swedish Lyrics, 

Century Magazine for "When the Time for 
Parting Comes," by Dorothea Lawrance Mann. 

Chicago Tribune for "A Nation's Face Up- 
turned," by John Bemer Crosby. 

Contemporary Verse for "The Naturalist on a 
June Sunday," by Leonora Speyer; "Make no 
Desperate Search for God," by John French Wil- 
son; and " One Path," by William Alexander Percy. 

McClure's Magazine for "The Pipes o* Gordon's 
Men," by J. Scott Glasgow. 

The Nation for "The Pagan," by Rose Hender- 
son. 

New York Sun for "Prayer of a Poet to God," by 
Joseph Bernard Rethy. 

New York Times for "The Laughing Prayer," 
by Louise DriscoU; and "Deferred," by Stokely S. 
Fisher. 

New York Tribune for "The Last Tourney," 
"Dissolution," "Worship," "Litany," and "To 
Captain Dale Mabry," by Frederic F. Van de 
Water; and "When Charon Beckons," by Francis 
Woolsey Bronson. 

The Outlook for "I Accept," by Harold Trow- 
bridge Pulsifer. 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv 

Reedy* s Mirror for "Exile from God," by John 
Hall Wheelock. 

The Roy crofters Anthology for "The Agnostic's 
Creed," by Walter Malone. 

Saturday Evening Post for "With the Tide," by 
Edith Wharton. 



CONTENTS 



A POET ENLISTS, Amelia Josephine Burr ... 35 

" AD CCELUM," Harry Romaine 52 

AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA, Edwin Arnold ... 59 

AFTERWARDS, Violet Fane 130 

AGNOSTIC'S CREED, THE, Walter Malone ... 65 
" ALIENI TEMPORIS FLORES," G. B. C. ... 80 
APRIL THEOLOGY, John G. Neihardt .... 87 

AT SUNSET, Seumas O'Sullivan 136 

AT THE TOP OF THE ROAD, Charles Buxton Going 129 
ATOMS AND AGES, Edwin Arlington Robinson . . 83 

AWAKENING, THE, Don Marquis 104 

" BECAUSE I HAVE LOVED LIFE," Amelia Josephine 

Burr 22 

BEFORE ACTION, Lieut. W. N. Hodgson ... 9 

BEYOND, John Gibson Lockhart I74 

BREAKING THE SILENCE, Amanda T. Jones . . 135 
CERTAIN VICTORY, THE, S. E. Kiser .... 89 
CLEANTHES' HYMN, Cleanthes the Stoic . . .166 
COAST OF COURAGE, THE, Anonymous ... 56 

COLLAR, THE, George Herbert 13 

CONCLUSION, A, Rachel Annand Taylor . . . .162 

CORONATION, Helen Hunt Jackson 34 

«' CORONEMUS NOS ROSIS ANTEQUAM MARCES- 

CANT," Thomas Jordan 92 

COWBOY'S PRAYER, A, Badger Clark .... 21 
DANCE OF DEATH, THE, Austin Dobson . . . 146 
"BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL," Walt Whitman 115 



xviii CONTENTS 



DAWN IN THE DESERT, Clinton ScoUard . . .156 
DEAD MARCH, A, Cosmo Monkhouse .... 126 

DEFERRED, Stokely S. Fisher 73 

DEPARTED FRIEND, THE, Robert Louis Stevenson . 137 

DESERVINGS, Anonymous 65 

" DIE, DRIVEN AGAINST THE WALL," Louise Imogen 

Guiney 10 

DISSOLUTION, Frederic F. Van de Water . . .111 
DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST, THE, Henry A. 

B^ers 76 

EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE, William Herbert Car- 
ruth 51 

EARTH GETS ITS PRICE, James Russell LoweU . . 39 
END OF ALL, THE, James Clarence Mangan . . . 145 

EPITAPH, Henry Herbert Knibbs I17 

EXILE FROM GOD, John Hall Wheelock . . .168 
" FEAR NOT THE MENACE," Richard Hovey . . 74 

FLIGHT, THE, Lloyd Mifflin 118 

" GATHER US IN," George Matheson . . . .155 
GOD IN MY GARDEN, Thomas Edward Brown . . 75 
GREAT ADVENTURE, THE, Major Kendall Banning . 141 
HE FELL AMONG THIEVES, Sir Henry Newbolt . . 24 
" HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP," Major A. B. 

Paterson 113 

" HE WHOM A DREAM HATH POSSESSED," Shae- 

mas O'Sheel 86 

HERACLITUS, William Johnson Cory 132 

HILLS OF REST, THE, Albert Bigelow Paine . . .114 
" HINC NOSTRA LACRIMiE," Don C. Seitz . . .134 
HIS OWNE EPITAPH, Francois Villon, translated by 

Wilfrid Thorley n8 

HUNGER, Gamaliel Bradford 53 

HUSH YOUR PRAYERS, Conal O'Riordan (Norroys 

Connell, pseud.) 4 



CONTENTS xix 



HYMN OF EMPEDOCLES, Matthew Arnold ... 63 
I ACCEPT, Harold Trowbridge Pulsifer .... 3 
"I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE," Sir Lewis 

Morris 45 

IF THIS WERE FAITH, Robert Louis Stevenson . . 72 

IMMORTALITY, Joseph Jefferson 157 

" 10 VICTIS," William Wetmore Story . . . .121 
JESUS THE CARPENTER, Catherine C. Liddcll . . 82 

KASIDAH, THE, Sir Richard Burton Io8 

KRITERION, Eugene F. Ware 102 

LAST APPEAL, A, Frederic William Henry Myers . . 69 
LAST CAMP-FIRE, THE, Sharlot M. Hall ... 58 
LAST TOURNEY, THE, Frederic F. Van de Water. . 7 
LAUGHING PRAYER, THE, Louise DriscoU ... 55 
LIE, THE, Sir Walter Raleigh . . . . . . .39 

LIGHT OF THE WORLD, THE, Rev. John W. Chad- 
wick 172 

LITANY, Frederic F. Van de Water 42 

LITTLE WORK, A. George Du Maurier .... 76 
LIVE YOUR LIFE — THEN TAKE YOUR HAT, Henry 

David Thoreau 53 

LONGING, Viktor Rydberg, translated by Charies Whar- 
ton Stork II 

LOST COMRADE, THE, Bliss Carman .... 44 
MABRY, CAPTAIN DALE, TO, Frederic F. Van de 

Water 176 

MAKE ME NO GRAVE, Henry Herbert Knibbs . . 15 
MAKE NO DESPERATE SEARCH FOR GOD, John 

French Wilson 81 

MAN'S BARGAIN, A, G. M. Hort 5 

MAN'S GUESS, Elihu Vedder 148 

MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH, William Johnson Cory . 91 
"MINE THE LIGHT OF SETTING SUN," William 
Winter 171 



XX CONTENTS 



MOVING FINGER WRITES, THE, Omar Khayy5m, 

translated by Edward Fitzgerald 98 

MY AIM, G. Linnseus Banks 69 

MY OLD COUNSELOR, Gertrude Hall . . . .149 

MYSTERY, Jerome B. Bell 63 

NATION'S FACE UPTURNED, A, John Bemer Crosby 16 
NATURALIST ON A JUNE SUNDAY, THE, Leonora 

Speyer . 49 

NAUGHTY NELL, Charles Wharton Stork .... 30 
NIRVANA, Rosamund Marriott Watson .... 99 
" NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE," Emily Bronte . .159 

NOTHINGNESS, Owen Meredith 103 

ONE FIGHT MORE, Robert Browning .... 8 
ONE PATH, William Alexander Percy . . . . lOI 
ONLY LAUGHTER IS SURE, Will H. Ogilvie ... 62 

PAGAN, THE, Rose Henderson 85 

PAINTING, THE, Dana Burnet 149 

PASSAGE TO INDIA, Walt Whitman . . . .151 
PASSING OF OLD TRINITY, Anonymous . . .169 
PEACE ON EARTH, Edwin Arlington Robinson . . 26 
PHANTOM CARAVAN, THE, Omar Khayyam, trans- 
lated by Edward Fitzgerald 97 

PIPES O' GORDON'S MEN, THE, J. Scott Glasgow . 128 

PIPPA'S SONG, Robert Browning 166 

PRAYER AMID FLAMES, Verner von Heidenstam, 

translated by Charles Wharton Stork . . . .154 
PRAYER FOR PAIN, John G. Neihardt .... 4 
PRAYER OF A POET TO GOD, Joseph Bernard 

Rethy 166 

PROBLEM, THE, Ralph Waldo Emerson .... 94 

QUESTION, A, Elihu Vedder 119 

RELIGION, Paul Kester 154 

REQUIEM, Major Kendall Banning 16 

ROOM FOR A SOLDIER! Thomas William Parsons . 143 



CONTENTS xxi 



RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, THE, translated by 

Edward Fitzgerald 97, 98 

" SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH," 

Arthur Hugh Clough 90 

SCEPTICS, THE, Bliss Carman 120 

SCIENTIST SPEAKS, THE, Charles Henry Mackintosh 92 
SECOND CRUCIFIXION, THE, Richard Le GalUenne . 161 

SEEKER, THE, Don Marquis 78 

SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL, Walt Whitman . . . 175 
STARS IN THE MIST, WiU H. Ogilvie . . . .100 
SUN-WORSHIPERS, THE, Henry Herbert Knibbs . 68 

TEARS, Lizctt© Woodworth Reese 163 

" THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US," Words- 
worth 38 

•• THERE IS NO DEATH," John L. McCreery . . .172 
THROUGH NATURE UP TO GOD, William Winter . 74 
" 'T IS ALL AND NOTHING," Anonymous . . .133 
TO CAPTAIN DALE MABRY, Frederic F. Van de 

Water 176 

UNBELIEF, Owen Meredith 57 

" UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE," Arthur O'Shaugh- 

nessy II2 

UP-HILL, Christina Georgina Rossetti 138 

VASTNESS, Tennyson 36 

VILLON'S REGRETS, John D. Swain 122 

*• VISION SPLENDID, THE," Wordsworth ... 89 

WAITING, John Burroughs 48 

WASHERWOMAN'S SONG, THE, Eugene F. Ware . 163 
WE LODGE HIM IN THE MANGER, Anonymous . 71 

WHAT IS TO COME, W. E. Henley 49 

WHEN CHARON BECKONS, Francis Woolsey Bronson 7 
WHEN I HAVE GONE WEIRD WAYS, John G. Neihardt 142 
WHEN SHE CAME TO GLORY, Florence Wilkinson 
. £yans 131 



xxii CONTENTS 



" WHEN THE TIME FOR PARTING COMES," Doro- 
thea Lawrance Mann Ii6 

WINE OF OMAR KHAYYAM, Eugene Lee-Hamilton . 94 

WISH, THE, Tennyson 159 

WITH THE TIDE, Edith Wharton 139 

" WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER 

SHADOW OF TURNING," Arthur Hugh Clough. . 165 
WORSHIP, Frederic F. Van de Water 28 



SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



I ACCEPT 

I shall go out as all men go, 
Spent flickers in a mighty wind, 
Then I shall know as all must know, 
What lies the great gray veil behind. 

There may be nothing but a deep 
And timeless void without a name 
Where no sun hangs, no dead stars sleep, 
And there is neither night nor flame. 

There may be meadows there and hills, 
Mountains and plains and winds that blow, 
And flowers bending over rills 
Springing from an eternal snow. 

There may be oceans white with foam 
And great tall ships for hungry men 
Who called our little salt seas home. 
And burn to launch their keels again. 

There may be voices I have known, 
Cool fingers that have touched my hair; 
There may be hearts that were my own — 
Love may abide forever there. 

Who knows? Who needs to understand 
If there be shadows there, or more — 



SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



To live as though a pleasant land 
Lay just beyond an open door? 

Harold Trowbridge Pulsijer 

HUSH YOUR PRAYERS 

Hush your prayers — 't is no saintly soul 
Comes fainting back from the fought en field ; 
Carry me forth on my broken shield ; 
Trumpet and drum shall my requiem yield — 
Silence the bells that toll. 

Big no hole in the ground for me : 
Though my body be made of mould and must. 
Ne'er in the earth shall my dead bones rust; 
Give my corse to the fiame*s white lust, 
And sink my ashes at sea. 

Reeking still with the sweat of the strife, 
Never a prayer have I to say, 
(My lips long since have forgotten the way) 
Save this: "I have sorrowed sore in my day — 
But I thank Thee, God, for my life." 

Norreys Connell 

PRAYER FOR PAIN 

I do not pray for peace nor ease, 
Nor truce from sorrow : 
No suppliant on servile knees 
Begs here against to-morrow! 

Lean flame against lean flame we flash, 
O Fates that meet me fair; 



A MAN'S BARGAIN 



Blue steel against blue steel we clash — 
Lay on, and 1 shall dare ! 

But Thou of deeps the awful Deep, 
Thou breather in the clay, 
Grant this my only prayer — Oh keep 
My soul from tiurning gray I 

For until now, whatever wrought 
Against my sweet desires, 
My days were smitten harps strung taut, 
My nights were slumbrous lyres. 

And howsoe'er the hard blow rang 
Upon my battered shield. 
Some lark-like, soaring spirit sang 
Above my battle-field; 

And through my soul of stormy night 
The zigzag blue-flame ran. 
I asked no odds — I fought my fight — 
Events against a man. 

But now — at last — the gray mist chokes 
And numbs me. Leave me pain I 
Oh let me feel the biting strokes 
That I may fight again 1 

John G. Neihardt 

A MAN'S BARGAIN 

If I cry out for fellowship, 
A comrade's voice, a comrade's grip, 
A hand to hold me when I slip. 
An ear to heed my groan — 



SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



Renew that dark hour's ecstasy] 
When all Thy waves went over me. 
And Thou and I, with none to see, 
Were joined in fight alone. 

If I demand a sheltered space 
Set for me in the battle-place. 
Where I at times could tiu-n my face, 

A screened and welcomed guest, — 
Decree my soul should henceforth cease 
From its wild hankering after peace. 
And rest in that which gives release 
- ^ From the desire for rest. 

If I for final goal should ask — 
Some meaning for the long day's task, 
Some ripened field that yet may bask, 

Secure from hurricane, — 
Point to Thy locust-eaten sheaves — 
The burnt-out stars, the still-born leaves I 
And by the Toil no hope retrieves 
Nerve me to toil again. 

So, to Thy hard, propitious skies 
Shall praise go up like sacrifice. 
And all the will within me rise. 

Applauding at Thy word : 
Thou, in the Glory, jasper-walled. 
By no reproach of mine be galled: 
And I, among my kind, be called 

The man whose prayers are heard. 

G. M. Hort 



WHEN CHARON BECKONS 



THE LAST TOURNEY 

I shall go forth one day to joust with death; 

The brittle little chains that hold me tied 

To rusted hopes, to visions cracked and dried, 

Shall break, and I shall hear the trumpet's breath 

Go clamoring across the barren heath, 

And for a flaming moment I shall ride 

The lists' brief course to meet the Undefied — 

And take the blow that I shall fall beneath. 

Each day I make this single fervent prayer : 

May then the blood of Bayard be my own; 

May I ride hard and straight and smite him square, 

And in a clash of arms be overthrown; 

And as I fall hear through the evening air 

The distant horn of Roland, faintly blown. 

Frederic F. Van de Water 



WHEN CHARON BECKONS 

When Charon beckons me and marks my place 
Within his barge, where whimpering souls are 

pressed 
So close together that the damned and blessed 
Seem one vague lump of blasphemy and grace; 
When fearlessly my eyes explore that space 
Called Heaven or Hell by some, by others Rest, 
I '11 mock the gasps of every awe-struck guest 
And turn toward that shore a tranquil face. 

For when that hour comes, as come it will. 
My lips shall rim the cup of life to quaff 



8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

The bitter-sweetish dregs — I shall not spill 

One solitary drop — and then I '11 laugh 
And lilt a sonnet with my dying breath 
And cram a quatrain 'twixt the teeth of Death. 

Francis Woolsey Bronson 

ONE FIGHT MORE 

Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place. 
The power of the night, the press of the storm, 

The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form. 

Yet the strong man must go : 
For the journey is done and the summit attained. 

And the barriers fall. 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gain'd. 

The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 

The best and the last ! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and for- 
bore. 

And bade me creep past. 
No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 

The heroes of old. 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 

Of pain, darkness and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 

The black minute 's at end. 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave. 

Shall dwindle, shall blend, 



BEFORE ACTION 



Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. 

Then a light, then thy breast, 
O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 

And with God be the rest! 

Robert Browning 

BEFORE ACTION 

By all the glories of the day, 
And the cool evening's benison: 
By the last sunset touch that lay 
Upon the hills when day was done: 
By beauty lavishly outpoured, 
And blessings carelessly received. 
By all the days that I have lived — • 
Make me a soldier, Lord. 

By all of all men's hopes and fears, 
And all the wonders poets sing, 
The laughter of unclouded years, 
And every sad and lovely thing: 
By the romantic ages stored 
With high endeavour that was his, 
By all his mad catastrophes — 
Make me a man, O Lord. 

I, that on my familiar hill 
Saw with uncomprehending eyes 
A hundred of Thy sunsets spill 
Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice. 
Ere the sun swings his noonday sword 
Must say good-bye to all of this: — 
By all delights that I shall miss — 
Help me to die, O Lord. 

Lieut. W. N. Hodgson 



10 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

"DIE, DRIVEN AGAINST THE WALL" 

A man said unto his Angel : 
"My spirits are fallen low. 
And I cannot carry this battle: 
O brother 1 where might I go? 

"The terrible Kings are on me 
With spears that are deadly bright; 
Against me so from the cradle 
Do fate and my fathers fight. " 

Then said to the man his Angel : 
" Thou wavering, witless soul. 
Back to the ranks I What matter 
To win or to lose the whole, 

"As judged by the little judges 
Who hearken not well, nor see? 
Not thus, by the outer issue. 
The Wise shall interpret thee. 

"Thy will is the sovereign measure 
And only event of things : 
The puniest heart, defying, 
Were stronger than all these Kings. 

"Though out of the past they gather, 
Mind's Doubt and Bodily Pain, 
And pallid Thirst of the Spirit 
That is kin to the other twain, 

"And Grief, in a cloud of banners, 
And riugletted Vain Desires, 



LONGING II 



And Vice with the spoils upon him 
Of thee and thy beaten sires, — 

"While Kings of eternal evil 
Yet darken the hills about, 
Thy part is with broken saber 
To rise on the last redoubt; 

"To fear not sensible failure. 
Nor covet the game at all, 
But fighting, fighting, fighting, 
Die, driven against the wall!" 

Louise Imogen Guiney 



LONGING 

He longs with a tireless yearning, 
Still seeking, wandering, turning 
At all times and everywhere, 
The sought-for goal receding, 
Flitting, enticing, leading 
With shifting likeness fair. 

A nodding flower of azure 
Above the field's ripe treasure 
First lures the wanderer on; 
But when he would stoop to pick it, 
It sinks in the billowy thicket 
Of rye-blades and is gone. 

A banner all golden-rifted. 
That spirit hands have lifted. 



12 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

On sunset towers upborne, 
An echo resounding faintly 
That 's blown from an old and quaintly- 
Wrought silver legend-horn. 

An organ-rapture outpouring 
From some great cathedral soaring 
'Mid streets where visions dwell; 
The blow of a hammer thund'rous 
When angels rear a wondrous 
Dream-lovely citadel. 

A sighing of ocean surges 
When dawn's first wave emerges 
On night's pale galaxy, — 
He listens and looks with yearning, 
Still this way and that way turning 
To find what it may be. 

A sea to which years run lightly, 
A river that mirrors brightly 
The Spring and its beauties rare. 
Beside whose waters haunted 
Two mortals languish enchanted 
And see but each other there. 

The river hastes from the flowers 
To Autumn's golden bowers, 
And whirls the dry leaves they wore 
To Ocean, the dark Unbounded, 
The wanderer staring astounded, 
Asks: "What of the farther shore?" 



THE COLLAR ' 13 



Perhaps his desire is bended 
On something uncomprehended, 
Which no man may comprehend; 
But he must ever be yearning, 
Must ever be wandering, turning, 
And seeking it without end. 

And should he reach World's Ending, 
With no road further tending, 
The border of Nothingness, — 
He'd bend him over the steep there 
And gaze into the deep there 
"With straining-eyed distress. 

And leaning over the steep there. 
He 'd cry into the deep there, — 
That echoless, vast Untrod, — 
And onward the shout should go where 
Is naught but the void of Nowhere, 
Go ringing through Chaos: "God!" 

From the Swedish of Viktor Rydberg 
Translated by Charles Wharton Stork 

THE COLLAR 

I struck the board, and cried, "No more; 

I will abroad. 
What! shall I ever sigh and pine? 
My lines and life are free; free as the road. 
Loose as the wind, as large as store. 

Shall I be still in suit? 
Have I no harvest but a thorn 
To let me blood and not restore 
What I have lost with cordial fruit? 



14 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

" Sure fhere was wine, 
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn 

Before my tears did drown it; 
Is the year only lost to me? 
Have I no bays to crown it, 
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted, 
All wasted? 
Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, 
And thou hast hands. 

"Recover all thy sigh-blown age 
On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute 
Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage, 

Thy rope of sands 
Which petty thoughts have made; and made to 
thee ^ 
Good cable, to enforce and draw, 

And be thy law. 
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. 

"Away! take heed; 
I will abroad. 
Call in thy death's-head there, tie up thy fears ; 
He that forbears 
To suit and serve his need 
Deserves his load.'* 
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild 
At every word, 
Methought I heard one calling, "Child I" 
And I replied, "My Lord!" 

George Herbert 



MAKE ME NO GRAVE 15 



MAKE ME NO GRAVE 

Make me no grave within that quiet place 

Where friends shall sadly view the grassy mound, 

Politely solemn for a little space, 

As though the spirit slept beneath the ground. 

For me no sorrow, nor the hopeless tear; 

No chant, no prayer, no tender eulogy: 
I may be laughing with the gods — while here 

You weep alone. Then make no grave for me. 

But lay me where the pines, austere and tall. 
Sing in the wind that sweeps across the West: 

Where night, imperious, sets her coronal 
Of silver stars upon the mountain crest. 

Where dawn, rejoicing, rises from the deep, 
And Life, rejoicing, rises with the dawn: 

Mark not the spot upon the sunny steep. 
For with the morning light I shall be gone. 

Far trails await me; valleys vast and still. 

Vistas undreamed-of, canon-guarded streams, 

Lowland and range, fair meadow, fiower-girt hill, 
Forests enchanted, filled with magic dreams. 

And I shall find brave comrades on the way: 
None shall be lonely in adventuring. 

For each a chosen task to round the day, 
New glories to amaze, new songs to sing. 

Loud swells the wind along the mountain-side, 
High burns the sun, unfettered swings the sea, 



i6 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Clear gleam the trails whereon the vanished ride, 
Life calls to life : then make no grave for me ! 

Henry Herbert Knibbs 

REQUIEM 

When I am dead, pray me no prayers; 

Intone no mummer's rhyme, 
Nor let the surpliced gentry ply 

Their priestly pantomime. 
Return, O God, my errant flesh 

Back to my mother earth, 
Wherein my dust may serve again, — 

— God will, at Spring's rebirth. 
Send back my dreams unto the hills 

Whence, on the winds, they came; 
Let strong, my passions, seek their own — 

Flame back to quivering flame ! 
Into Thy hands return that love 

Men call the soul of me — 
And give my spirit back to the indomitable sea. 

Major Kendall Banning 

A NATION'S FACE UPTURNED 
October 4, 1914 

The leader of our nation bids us pray; 

He bids us pray that alien wars shall cease ; 

He bids us pray 

All on one day — 
To pray, the mass of all of us — for peace. 

We're not a praying nation, in the main; 
We list, in mass, toward shallow-rooted dare; 



A NATION'S FACE UPTURNED 17 

And yet his words 
Have moved our herds 
Of bold and cynic hearts to pristine prayer! 

No race are we — yet race of races made; 
Careless, impatient, and each day rebrained; 

And still the core 

Of our heart has more 
Of reverence than ever yet has drained. 

We are not skilled in prayer — nor know the form 
That shall befit the crisis of our kia 

Wliere'er they bide; 

And yet he cried 
Not vainly; for we sense the smell of sin; 

And though we do not pray to sate the code, 
We pray in euphony of honest hearts; 

Our stumbling word 

Will yet be heard 
Above the rattle of the armored carts. 

For know we that a prayer is but a wish 
From heart so deep that rhetoric's poor plumb 

Falls short, bereft 

Of use; but left — 
God finds the music of the hope born dumb. 

In the tongue of every sufferer shall we pray — 
With bungled, mumbled language hesitant; 

But more 't will mean 

On God to lean 
With such than with the best the poets grant. 



i8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

And some will name the god they seek, 

And some will limn his face ! 

And some will scar his thought of them 

By hedging *round his place; 

And some will fear the god they speak, 

And some will say "My Brother — " 

And some will say "My Father dear — *' 

And some, this, that or other; 

And every kind of god they hail 

Will smile, and take their message, 

And carry it to the God of gods — 

You see what small things presage? 

As a fleck of dust on an ocean crest 
From the deck of a scoured yacht 
Will look this earth, minute, of ours 
To the God of gods as He turns His face, 
*Mid the woven swirls of all His worlds, 
In the whir of His frozen space — 

And yet will He heed ; and He will say, 
" What do my people wish to-day? 
What is their debt they cannot pay? 
Let mine own ear discern the hum 
Of their discord: I bid them come." 

And then, obscure as a gnat at night. 

Shall we tell THE GOD of our brothers' plight: 

And this our blurted prayer: — 

"Fools they may be to fools have named 

As masters of men — whose rule has maimed 



A NATION'S FACE UPTURNED 19 

The bravest they had of muscle and soul — 
Yet we forgive their folly 1 

"They have exalted as Lords of Earth 
The helmets small, and the wide of girth — • 
They took the road and they've paid the toll — 
And there's no rebate on folly. 

"And now the mesh they have woven well 
Is snaring them and their kin to hell. 
For setting the spear above the poll — • 
Lord God, condone their folly I 

"We speak not of ourselves at all, 
Lest we seek to exalt ourselves — and fall; 
'T would not be true if we should state 
That we alone know Thee. 

"But, seeing our brothers in shrapnel hail — 
Stung by the pang of their children's wail — 
Scenting the skunk at the palace gate — ■ 
We fear they have forgotten; — 

"Our brothers are drunk with the taste of blood. 
Their brains are sprayed with the sanguine flood — 
Impregnate them with a hate for hate — 
We pray Thee, Lord! 

"Teach Thou them to love but Love — 
Guide their baffled brains above — 
Turn their hands to the worthy wheat — 
For their sake, Lord I 



20 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

" Map for the kings their ending path — 
Touch their tongues in Thy cup of wrath — 
Flash in their eyes the judgment seat 
For the kings' souls* sake, O Lord I 

"'Lords of War* look very small; 
Bid Thou them act not at all — 
Bid Thou them reject the pall — 
Bid Thou them avert the fall 
By acceptance of Thy call — ■ 
We pray Thee, Lord I 

"And if our hopes be not too great — 
And since Thou'rt kind enough to wait 
For us to speak our plea devout — 

(We thank Thee, Lord !) — 

\{ 

"Let us ask, for ourselves alone, 
A word of cheer, to still our moan — 
We mean so well — but so much doubt 
What is Thy will — 

" We feel so sure Thou soon wilt curb — 
From Teuton lord to humble Serb, 
From Saxon hull to Slavic knout — 
Thy flouting. Lord. 

"That it is hard for us to be 
As patient as Thou think'st that we 
(In view of our exempted lives, 
Mayhap), should bide: 

"Dear Lord, the gods of our sects have failed; 
Facing their frowns no monarch quailed; 



A COWBOY'S PRAYER 21 

Our gods all tried to do the right — 
Our gods all sought to stop the fight, 
But lacked the might; 

"So now They come with us to THEE — 
Our gods and us, on doubled knee — 
Seeking to bathe in Thy great light, 
O, God of gods! 

"And thus we pray to Thee, Lord God — 
Craving Thy love — nor fearing Thy rod — 
Daring to face Thee from our hives — 
We, our children and our wives — 
Craving Thy deserved gyves — 
Placing in Thy hands our lives — 

"We pray Thee, Lord, 
To guide us in our baffling days — 
Stay us in our swaying ways — 
Answer as our hearts have cried — 

Stop these wars I 

Oh, Lord of Peace!" 

John Bemer Crosby 

A COWBOY'S PRAYER 

Lord, I've never lived where churches grow. 
I love creation better as it stood 

That day You finished it so long ago 

And looked upon your work and called it good. 

1 know that others find You in the light 

That's sifted down through tinted window-panes. 
And yet I seem to feel You near to-night 
In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains. 



22 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I thank You, Lord, that I am placed so well, 

That You have made my freedom so complete; 
That I'm no slave of whistle, clock or bell, 

Nor weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street. 
Just let me live my life as I've begun 

And give me work that's open to the sky; 
Make me a pardner of the wind and sun. 

And I won't ask a life that's soft or high. 

Let me be easy on the man that's down; 

Let me be square and generous with all. 
I'm careless sometimes. Lord, when I'm in town. 

But never let 'em say I'm mean or small I 
Make me as big and open as the plains, 

As honest as the hawse between my knees, 
Clean as the wind that blows behind the rains, 

Free as the hawk that circles down the breeze. 

Forgive me. Lord, if sometimes I forget. 

You know about the reasons that are hid. 
You understand the things that gall and fret; 

You know me better than my mother did. 
Just keep an eye on all that's done and said 

And right me, sometimes, when I turn aside, 
And guide me on the long, dim trail ahead 

That stretches upward toward the Great Divide. 

Badger Clark 

"BECAUSE I HAVE LOVED LIFE" 

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 

die. 
I have sent up my gladness on wings, to be lost in 

the blue of the sky. 



"BECAUSE I HAVE LOVED LIFE" 23 

I have run and leaped with the rain, I have taken 

the wind to ray breast. 
My cheek like a drowsy child to the face of the 

earth I have pressed. 

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 

die. 
I have kissed young Love on the lips, I have heard 

his song to the end. 
I have struck my hand like a seal in the loyal hand 

of a friend. 
I have known the peace of heaven, the comfort of 

work done well. 
I have longed for death in the darkness and risen 

alive out of hell. 

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 

die. 
I give a share of my soul to the world v/here my 

course is run. 
I know that another shall finish the task I must 

leave imdone. 
I know that no flower, no flint was in vain on the 

path I trod. 
As one looks on a face through a window, through 

life I have looked on God. 
Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 

die. 

Amelia Josephine Burr 



24 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

HE FELL AMONG THIEVES 

"Ye have robb'd," said he, "ye have claughterM 
and made an end; 
Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead : 
What will ye more of your guest and sometime 
friend?" 
"Blood for our blood,'* they said. 

He laughM: "If one may settle the score for five, 
I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till 
day: 

I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive." 
"You shall die at dawn," said they. 

He flung his empty revolver down the slope, 
He climbM alone to the Eastward edge of the 
trees; 

All night long in a dream untroubled of hope 
He brooded, clasping his knees. 

He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills 
The ravine where the Yassin river sullenly flows; 

He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills, 
Or the far Afghan snows. 

He saw the April noon on his books aglow. 
The wistaria trailing in at the window wide; 

He heard his father's voice from the terrace below 
Calling him down to ride. 

He saw the gray little church across the park, 
The mounds that hid the loved and honour'd 
dead; 



HE FELL AMONG THIEVES 25 

The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark, 
The brasses black and red. 

He saw the School-close, sunny and green, 
The runner beside him, the stand by the para- 
pet wall, 

The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between. 
His own name over ail. 

He saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof. 
The long tables, and the faces merry and keen; 

The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof. 
The Dons on the dais serene. 

He watch'd the liner's stem ploughing the foam, 
He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of 
her screw; 

He heard the passengers' voices talking of home. 
He saw the flag she flew. 

And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his 
feet, 
And strode to his ruin'd camp below the wood; 
He drank the breath of the morning cool and 
sweet: 
His murderers round him stood. 

Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast, 
The blood-red snow-peaks chill'd to a dazzling 
white ; 

He turn'd, and saw the golden circle at last. 
Cut by the Eastern height. 



26 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

" O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun : 
I have lived, I praise and adore Thee." 

A sword swept. 
Over the pass the voices one by one 
Faded, and the hill slept. 

Sir Henry Newbolt 

PEACE ON EARTH 

He took a frayed hat from his head, 
And "Peace on Earth'* was what he said. 
"A morsel out of what you're worth. 
And there we have it: Peace on Earth. 
Not much, although a little more 
Than what there was on earth before. 
I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod, — 
But never mind the ways I've trod; 
I'm sober now, so help me God!" 

I could not pass the fellow by: 
"Do you believe in God?" said I; 
"And is there to be Peace on Earth?" 

" To-night we celebrate the birth, " 

He said, "of One who died for men; 

The Son of God, we say. What then? 

Your God, or mine? I 'd make you laugh 

Were I to tell you even half 

That I have learned of mine to-day 

Where yoiu-s would hardly seem to stay. 

Could He but follow in and out 

Some anthropoids I know about. 

The god to whom you may have prayed 

Might see a world He never made." 



PEACE ON EARTH 27 

"Your words are flowing full," said I; 
"But yet they give me no reply; 
Your fountain might as v/ell be dry.'* 

"A wiser One than you, my friend, 
Would wait and hear me to the end; 
And for his eyes a light would shine 
Through this unpleasant shell of mine 
That in your fancy makes of me 
A Christmas curiosity. 
All right, I might be worse than that; 
And you might now be lying flat; 
I might have done it from behind. 
And taken what there was to find. 
Don't worry, for I *m not that kind. 
*Do I believe in God?' Is that 
The price to-night of a new hat? 
Has he commanded that his name 
Be written everywhere the same? 
Have all who live in every place 
Identified his hidden face? 
Who knows but he may like as well 
My story as one you may tell? 
And if he show me there be Peace 
On Earth, as there be fields and trees 
Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong 
If now I sing him a new song? 
Your world is in yourself, my friend, 
For your endurance to the end; 
And all the Peace there is on Earth 
Is faith in what your world is worth, 
And saying, without any lies. 
Your world could not be otherwise." 



28 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

"One might say that and then be shot," 
I told him; and he said: "Why not?" 
I ceased, and gave him rather more 
Than he was counting of my store. 

"And since I have it, thanks to you, 
Don't ask me v^^hat I mean to do," 
Said he: "Believe that even I 
"Would rather tell the truth than lie — 
On Christmas Eve. No matter why." 

His unshaved, educated face, 

His inextinguishable grace, 

And his hard smile, are with me still, 

Deplore the vision as I will; 

For whatsoever he be at, 

So droll a derelict as that 

Should have at least another hat. 

Edwin Arlington Robinson 

WORSHIP 

I think that God might hear my prayer. 
If I could kneel and worship where 
A simple folk on Sunday use 
The shallow ranks of narrow pews 
As seats that audience afford 
Before an almost-visioned Lord. 
If I might see them kneeling, dressed 
In strait and awkward Sabbath best, 
To celebrate His ordained day, 
I almost might relearn to pray. 



WORSHIP 20 



I'd like to watch his careful tread 

Along the aisle, red-carpeted; 

His white bow-tie, his rusty frock — • 

Old shepherd of a failing flock, 

Who all the years his way has trod, 

One hand upon the arm of God; 

To see him in the pulpit stand, 

And beat the time with withered hand, 

And smile upon us as we raise 

Old Hundred's ancient hymn of praise. 

Perhaps his stark theology 

Would fan to flame no spark in me. 

I wonder if, to hail the Throne, 

One needs a sanctimonious tone, 

And must each plea for aid propose 

In words that issue through the nose? 

I doubt if heaven greatly savors 

Hymns quite so full of flats and quavers; 

But yet, perhaps, they rise far higher 

Than anthems of a vested choir. 

But I have watched the sunlight come, 
Across the long prayer's drone and hum. 
To touch a crown of thin, white hair 
And weave a golden halo there; 
Have seen, through windows open wide. 
Broad fields where bobolinks abide; 
Have seen the grasses sway and glisten 
And daisies bow their heads to listen 
Beneath a tranquil summer sky — 
And heard God's footsteps passing by. 

Frederic F. Van de Water 



30 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

NAUGHTY NELL 

There came a knock at the door of Heaven 

And the knock was firm and light. 

St. Peter he opened the window grill 

And looked on a puzzling sight: 

A maiden sweet as a swaying bough 

Of apple-buds pink and white. 

He scratched his forehead and looked again: 

No doubt but the girl was fair, 

She lowered the lids of her blue-bell eyes 

With a half impenitent air, 

And the smile that lurked in her pouting lips 

Had little to do with prayer. 

"Name?" he inquired in formal tones. 

"Nell Bassett," the answer feU. 

"If you please, I thought I might come and knock 

Before I was dragged to hell, 

Though there's small use looking my record up, 

For my nickname was Naughty Nell." 

St. Peter he stretched to a dusty shelf 
And hefted a volume down, 
He read in the light that the halo shed 
From the bald rim of his crown: 
"Ah! Bassett, Eleanor, nineteen-two, 
June twentieth, Dorking town." 

He scanned her over the edge of the book, 
And she answered him, "Yes, that's L 
I *ve never done anything good, I know, 
But I did n't have long to try. 



NAUGHTY NELL 31 



I'd always meant to begin some day 
Before I came to die." 

"That's odd, for I find you lost your life 
In the fever that came this year 
Nursing a child whose mother died 
While the rest kept away in fear." 
"You would n't have had me let it starve, 
The poor little lonely dear!" 

"You were the girl that fought Bill Jenks 

When he came home drunk one night, 

And his wife screamed *Help!' but never a man 

Durst enter the house for fright." 

"Why, who was gladder of that than Bill 

Next day when his head was right?" 

"Be still, please, Nell. — Your case is clear, 
Your faults are but light and few ; 
Here's a page and a half of kindly deeds 
That your short life found to do. 
I need not hold you a minu-te more 
From the bliss that waits for you.'* 

The door swung wide, and a sudden glow 

Of radiance blossomed out, 

The air was rich with the scent of myrrh. 

With song and triumphal shout; 

Yet over the face of the dazzled girl 

Came a look as of fear and doubt. 

"Please, but it's all a mistake, I'm feared," 
She stammered; "I was n't good. 



32 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I always did what I chose to do 
As often as ever I could, 
I never moidered and vexed myself 
The way I was told I should. 

"Are yoH sure that all of my sins are down, — 

The time that I ran away 

From prayers with Ned into Folsom Wood 

And tarried there all the day, 

And he kissed my lips that kissed again 

By the streamside as we lay?" 

"Whatever was sin is entered here," 

Said Peter, and smote his book, 

For his temper was short, the worthy saint. 

But when he had cast a look 

At the trouble that shadowed the girl's clear eyes, 

All anger his heart forsook. 

"Please help me," she faltered. "I know it*s 

wrong. 
But I feel a bit naughty still. 
I want to frolic and race and dance, 
Not sit and do God's will; 
Will there anybody like me be there, 
Or is everyone staid and chill? '* 

Then Peter laughed — he could do no less — 

"Why, Nell, are you then afraid 

That Heaven will be like Dorking town 

At church or dress parade. 

That tongues are still and thoughts are chill — 

And everyone dull and staid? 



NAUGHTY NELL 33 

"The beams of light that spread ou earthj^ 

'Wlien your clean spirit shone, 

Were darted from the crystal depth 

Of the Eternal Throne. 

Hark to the raptm-ous shouts of praise 

To Him Who sits thereon I 

"The golden voice of sympathy, 

The gallant din of mirth 

That lust and pride and selfish fear 

Have deafened upon earth, 

All wishes flowering beauty-wards 

That drooped of old in dearth — 

"All these win free as purest thought 

To flame aloft in heaven, 

All oppositions melt away, 

The rusted chains are riven, 

A vast unending festival 

To joy, to joy is given!'* 

His ancient, youthful voice was still, 

Too weak to utter more, 

And Naughty Nell bowed silently 

To marvel and adore; 

Then, calm with ecstasy, she rose 

And passed through the shining door. 

Charles Wharton Stork 



34 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



CORONATION 

At the king's gate the subtle noon 

Wove filmy yellow nets of sun; 
Into the drowsy snare too soon 

The guards fell one by one. 

Through the king's gate, unquestioned then, 
A beggar went, and laughed: "This brings 

Me chance, at last, to see if men 
Fare better, being kings." 

The king sat bowed beneath his crown, 
Propping his face with listless hand; 

Watching the hour-glass sifting down — 
Too slow its shining sand. 

"Poor man, what wouldst thou have of me?"- 

The beggar turned, and pitying. 
Replied, like one in dream, " Of thee, 

Nothing. I want the king." 

Uprose the king, and from his head 

Shook off the crown, and threw it by — 

" O man, thou must have known," he said, 
"A greater king than I." 

Through all the gates, unquestioned then, 
Went king and beggar hand in hand. 

Whispered the king, " Shall I know when 
Before His throne I stand?" 

The beggar laughed. Free winds in haste 
Were wiping from the king's hot brow 



A POET ENLISTS 35 



The crimson lines the crown had traced — 
"Tiiis is his presence, now.'* 

At the king's gate, the crafty noon 

Unwove its yellow nets of sun; 
Out of their sleep in terror soon 

The guards waked one by one. 

"Ho here! Ho there! Has no man seen 
The king?" The cry ran to and fro; 

Beggar and king, they laughed, I ween, 
The laugh that free men know. 

On the king's gate the moss grew gray; 

The king came not. They called him dead; 
And made his eldest son one day 

Slave in his father's stead. 

Helen Hunt Jackson 



A POET ENLISTS 

And all the songs that I might sing — 
Madness to risk them so, you say? 

How is it such a certain thing 
That I can sing them if I stay? 

The winds of God are past control, 
They answer to no human call, 

And if I lose my living soul 

That is — for me — the end of all. 

Better to shout one last great song, 
Dying myself, to dying men, 



36 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Than crawl the bitter years along 
And never sing again. 

Amelia Josephine Burr 

VASTNESS 

Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after 

many a vanish 'd face, 
Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the 

dust of a vanish'd race. 

Raving politics, never at rest — as this poor earth's 

pale history runs, — 
What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a 

million million of suns? 

Lies upon this side, 'lies upon that side, truthless 

violence mourn'd by the Wise, 
Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular 

torrent of lies upon lies; 

Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of 

army and fleet. 
Death for the right cause, death for the wrong 

cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat; 

Innocence seethM in her mother's milk, and Char- 
ity setting the martyr aflame; 

Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, 
and recks not to ruin a realm in her name; 

Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of 
doubts that darken the schools; 

Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow'd 
up by her vassal legion of fools ; 



VASTNESS 



Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice 
and her vintage, her silk and her corn; 

Desolate ofSng, sailorless harbors, famishing popu- 
lace, wharves forlorn; 

Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom of 

the evening, Life at a close; 
Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway with 

her flying robe and her poison'd rose; 

Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleasure, 
a worm which writhes all day, and at night 

Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings 
him back to the curse of the light ; 

Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; 

honest Poverty, bare to the bone; 
Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery gilding 

the rift in a throne; 

Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubi- 
lant challenge to Time and to Fate; 

Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the 
laurell'd graves of the Great; 

Love for the maiden, crown'd v/ith marriage, no re- 
grets for aught that has been. 

Household, happiness, gracious children, debtless 
competence, golden mean; 

National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy 

spites of the village spire; 
Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and 

vows that are snapp'd in a moment of fire; 



38 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

He that has liv'd for the lust of a minute, and died 
in the doing it, flesh without mind; 

He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till Self 
died out in the love of his kind ; 

Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and 
all these old revolutions of earth; 

All new-old revolutions of Empire — change of the 
tide — what is all of it worth? 

What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, 

varying voices of prayer? 
All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy 

with all that is fair? 

What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our 

own corpse-coffins at last, 
Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in 

the deeps of a meaningless Past? 

What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a mo- 
ment's anger of bees in their hive? — 

Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him for 
ever: the dead are not dead — but alive. 

Tennyson 



"THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US" 

The world is too much with us; late and soon. 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
Little we see in Nature that is ours. 

Great God! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 



THE LIE 39 

So might I standing on this pleasant lea, 

Have gHmpses that would make me less forlorn; 

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 

Wordsworth 



EARTH GETS ITS PRICE 

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; 

The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 

We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
At the devil's booth are all things sold. 
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 

For a cap and bells our lives we pay. 
Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 

'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
'T is only God may be had for the asking; 
No price is set on the lavish summer; 
June may be had by the poorest comer. 

James Russell Lowell 



THE LIE 

Go, Soul, the Body's guest, 
Upon a thankless arrant; 

Fear not to touch the best; 
The truth shall be thy warrant; 

Go, since I needs must die, 

And give the World the lie. 

Say to the Court, it glows 
And shines like rotten wood: 



40 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Say to the Church, it shows 

What's good, and doth no good: 
If Court and Church reply 
Then give them both the lie. 

Tell Potentates, they live 
Acting by others' action, 

Wot loved unless they give. 
Not strong but by a faction: 

If Potentates reply, 

Give Potentates the lie. 

Tell men of high condition 
That manage the Estate, 

Their purpose is ambition. 
Their practice, only hate: 

And if they once reply. 

Then give them all the lie. 

Tell them that brave it most. 
They beg for more by spending, 

Who, in their greatest cost. 
Seek nothing but commending: 

And if they make reply. 

Then give them all the lie. 

Tell Zeal it wants devotion ; 

Tell Love it is but lust; 
Tell Time it is but motion; 

Tell Flesh it is but dust: 
And wish them not reply. 
For thou must give the lie. 



THE LIE 4'i 

Tell Age it daily wasteth; 

Tell Honor how it alters; 
Tell Beauty how she blasteth; 

Tell Favor how it falters: 
And as they shall reply, 
Give every one the lie. 

Tell Wit how much it wrangles 
In tickle points of niceness; 

Tell Wisdom she entangles 
Herself in over-wiseness: 

And v/hen they do reply, 

Straight give them both the lie. 

Tell Physic of her boldness; 

Tell Skill it is pretension; 
Tell Charity of coldness; 

Tell Law it is contention: 
And as they do reply. 
So give them still the lie. 

Tell Fortune of her blindness; 

Tell Nature of decay; 
Tell Friendship of unkindness; 

Tell Justice of delay: 
And if they will reply, 
Then give them all the lie. 

Tell Arts they have no soundness, 

But vary by esteeming; 
Tell Schools they want profoundness, 

And stand too much on seeming: 
If Arts and Schools reply, 
Give Arts and Schools the lie. 



42 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Tell Faith it's fled the City; 

Tell how the Country erreth, 
Tell Manhood shakes off pity; 

Tell Virtue least pref erreth: 
And if they do reply, 
Spare not to give the lie. 

So when thou hast, as I 

Commanded thee, done blabbing, 

Although to give the lie 

Deserves no less than stabbing, — 

Yet, stab at thee that will. 

No stab the soul can kill! 

Sir Walter Raleigh 

LITANY 

Give me Thy grace; 

Not for the shouting assault when my banner ad- 
vances; 
Not for the thunder of hooves and the tempest of 

lances. 
Keep Thou my face 
Calm in the heart-breaking crash of the overturned 

dream. 
When to my mouth comes the sickening, salt taste 

of fear. 
And over the tumult and cries of the vanquished I 

hear 
The hurrying wings of the Furies; their hideous 

scream — 
Give me Thy steadfastness then, O God. Give me 

Thy grace I 



LITANY 43 

Give me Thy mirth; 

Hot for the sun and the sky and the summer wind's 
laughter, 

Not for the meeting of friends and the wine that 
flows after. 

But when the earth 

Hardens to iron and the winds of adversity blow, 

When the past walks, a terrible ghost, and the fu- 
ture is vain, — 

Give me Thy bright gift of laughter to flaunt before 
pain ; 

Give me Thy smile to fling stark in the teeth of the 
foe; 

Give me the flame of Thy manhood, God. Give me 
Thy mirth. 

Hear me, O Lord I 

Teach me to stand on my feet in the final black 

hour ; 
Turn Thou my eyes unafraid to the oncoming 

power. 
Give me a sword ! 
Grant that I cry for no shield to withstand his bleak 

blade. 
But a hilt in my hand and an edge that the foeman 

may feel; 
Let me pass to the chime and the chant and the 

clangor of steel, 
That You see and rejoice in the soul of the man You 

have made; 
This is my prayer to You, God of Men. Hear me, O 

Lord I 

Frederic F. Van de Water 



44 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



THE LOST COMRADE 

Now v/ho will tell me aright 

The way my lost companion went in the night? 

My vanished comrade who passed from the roofs of 

men, 
And will not come again. 

I have wandered up and down 
Through all the streets of this bright and busy tovm, 
Yet no one has seen a trace of him since the day 
He silently went away. 

I have haunted the wharves and the slips, 

And talked with foreigners from the incoming 

ships. 
But when I questioned them closely about my 

friend, 
They seemed not to comprehend. 

From men of book-learning, too, 
I have sought knowledge, confident that they knew. 
But when I inquired simply about my chum, 
They glanced at me anfl were dumb. 

I have entered your churches of stone. 

And heard discourse about God and the throng 

'round his throne. 
But the preacher knew nothing at all, when I broke 

in with: "Where?" — 
And the people could only stare. 

Ah, no, you may read and read. 

Pile modern heresy upon ancient creed I 



"I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE" 45 

But for all your study you know no more tlian I, 
Under the open sky. 

So — *t is, Back to the Inn for me, 

WTiere my great friend and I were happy and free. 

And I will remember his beautiful words and his 

ways. 
For the rest of my days; 

How eager he was for truth. 

Yet never scorned the good things of his youth — 
The soul of gentleness and the soul of lovel 
I shall be wise enough. 

Bliss Carman 

"I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE*' 

Let me at last be laid 

On that hillside I know which scans the vale, 

Beneath the thick yews' shade. 

For shelter when the rains and winds prevail. 

It cannot be the eye 

Is blinded when we die. 

So that we know no more at all 

The dawn's increase, the evening's fall; 

Shut up within a mouldering chest of wood 

Asleep, and careless of our children's good. 

Shall I not feel the spring. 

The yearly resurrection of the earth, 

Stir thro' each sleeping thing 

With the fair throbbings and alarms of birth, 

Caljing at its own hour 

On folded leaf and flower. 



46 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Calling the lamb, the lark, the bee, 
Calling the crocus and anemone, 
Calling new lustre to the maiden^s eye. 
And to the youth love and ambition high? 

Shall I no more admire 

The winding river kiss the daisied plain? 

Nor see the dawn*s cold fire . 

Steal downward from the rosy hills again? 

Nor watch the frowning cloud, 

Sublime with mutterings loud, 

Burst on the vale, nor eves of gold, 

Nor crescent moons, nor starlights cold. 

Nor the red casements glimmer on the hill 

At Yule-tides, when the frozen leas are still? 

Or, should my children's tread 

Through Sabbath twilights, when the hymns are 

done. 
Come swiftly overhead, 

Shall no sweet quickening through my bosom run, 
Till all my soul exhale 
Into the primrose pale. 
And every flower which springs above 
Breathes a new perfume from my love; 
And I shall throb, and stir, and thrill beneath, 
With a pure passion stronger far than death? 

Sweet thought ! fair, gracious dream. 

Too fair and fleeting for our clearer view ! 

How should our reason deem 

That those dear souls, who sleep beneath the blue, 



"I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE" 47 

In rayless caverns dim, 

*Mid ocean monsters grim, 

Or whitening on the trackless sand, 

Or with strange corpses on each hand 

In battle-trench or city graveyard lie, 

Break not their prison-bonds till time shall die? 

Nay, *t is not so indeed: 

With the last fluttering of the falling bieath 

The clay-cold form doth breed 

A viewless essence, far too fine for death; 

And, ere one voice can mourn, 

On upward pinions borne. 

They are hidden, they are hidden, in some thin air, 

Far from corruption, far from care. 

Where through a veil they view their former scene, 

Only a little touch'd by what has been. 

Touch'd but a little; and yet. 

Conscious of every change that doth befall, 

By constant change beset. 

The creatures of this tiny whirling ball, 

Fill'd with a higher being, 

Dower'd with a clearer seeing, 

Risen to a vaster scheme of life, 

To wider joys and nobler strife. 

Viewing our little human hopes and fears 

As we our children's fleeting smiles and tears. 

Then, whether with fire they burn 

This dwelling-house of mine when I am fled, 

And in a marble urn 

My ashes rest by my beloved dead, 



48 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Or in the sweet cold earth 
I pass from death to birth, 
And pay kind Nature's life-long debt 
In heart's-ease and in violet — 
In charnel-yard or hidden ocean wave^ 
Where'er I lie, I shall not scorn my grave. 

Sir Lewis Morris 

WAITING 

Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 
Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; 

I rave no more 'gainst time or fate. 
For, lo ! my own shall come to me. 

I stay my haste, I make delays, 
For what avails this eager pace? 

I stand amid the eternal ways, 

And what is mine shall know my face. 

Asleep, awake, by night or day. 
The friends I seek are seeldng me; 

No wind can drive my bark astray, 
Nor change the tide of destiny. 

What matter if I stand alone? 

I wait with joy the coming years; 
My heart shall reap where it has sown, 

And garner up its fruit of tears. 

The waters know their own and draw 
The brook that springs in yonder height; 

So flows the good with equal law 
Unto the soul of pure delight. 



NATURALIST ON A JUNE SUNDAY 49 

The stars come nightly to the sky; 

The tidal wave unto the sea; 
Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, 

Can keep my own away from me. 

John Burroughs 

WHAT IS TO COME 

What is to come we know not. But we know 
That what has been was good — was good to show, 
Better to hide, and best of all to bear. 
We are the masters of the days that were: 
We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered 
. . . even so. 

Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow? 
Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe — 
E'en though it spoil and break us! — need we care 
What is to come? 

Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, 
Or the gold weather round us mellow slow: 
We have fulfilled ourselves, and we 'can dare 
And we can conquer, though we may not share 
In the rich quiet of the afterglow 

What is to come. 

W. E. Henley 

THE NATURALIST ON A JUNE SUNDAY 

My old gardener leans on his hoe. 

Tells me the way that green things grow; 

"Goin* to church? Why, no. 

All nature's church enough for mel" 

Says he. 



50 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

"Preachin* o* flower and choir o* bird, 

An' the wind passin' the plate — 

Sweetest service that ever / heard, 

That's straight! 

Eternal Rest? 

What for, friend? 

Gimme a swarm o' bees to tend, 

A honey-makin', world without end, 

That's what I'd like the best! 

(Scoop 'em right up an' find the queen. 

They'd not sting me — the bees ain't mean!) 

"Heaven's all right! 

But still I guess I '11 kinder miss 

The Lady Lunar-moth at night 

And the White Wanderer butterfly 

Crawlin' out of its chrysalis ! 

I want my heaven human too, 

'Twixt me an' you — 

Why, I'd jus' love to see 

A chipmunk hop up to the Lord 

An' eat right out o' His dread Hand 

Same as it does to me! 

Eternity! Eternity! 

Don't it sound grand? 

But say, 

What's the matter with to-day? 

Just step into the wood an' take a look! 

Ain't that a page o' teachin' from the Holy Book? 

* He that hath eyes to see 

An' ears to hear' — 

That's good enough for mel 

I guess God's pretty near, 



EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 51 

IIe*ll understand, / know, 
Why I ain't in no hurry to let June go!" 

My old gardener turns to his hoe. 
Helping the green things how to grow, 
"The Missus can go to church for me! 
Amen!" says he. 

Leonora Speyer 

EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 

A fire-mist and a planet, — 

A crystal and a cell, — ■ 
A jellyfish and a saurian, 

And caves where the cave-men dwell; 
Then a sense of law and beauty, 

And a face turned from the clod, — 
Some call it Evolution, 

And others call it God. 

A haze on the far horizon, 

The infinite, tender sky, 
The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, 

And the wild geese sailing high, — 
And all over upland and lowland 

The charm of the goldenrod, — 
Some of us call it Autumn, 

And others call it God. 

Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
When the moon is new and thin, 

Into our hearts high yearnings 
Come welling and surging in, — ' 



52 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



Come from the mystic ocean, 
Whose rim no foot has trod, — 

Some of us call it Longing, 
And others call it God. 

A picket frozen on duty, — 

A mother starved for her brood, — 
Socrates drinking the hemlock, 

And Jesus on the rood; 
And millions who, humble and nameless, 

The straight, hard pathway plod, — 
Some call it Consecration, 

And others call it God. 

William Herbert Carruih 



"AD CCELUM" 

At the Muezzin's Call for prayer. 
The kneeling Faithful thronged the square, 
And on Pushkara's lofty height 
The dark priest chanted Brahma's might. 
Amid a monastery's weeds 
An old Franciscan told his beads; 
While to the synagogue there came 
A Jew, to praise Jehovah's name. 
The one great God looked down and smiled 
And counted each his loving child; 
For Turk and Brahmin, moak and Jew 
Had reached Him through the gods they knew. 

Harry Romaine 



LIVE YOUR LIFE 53 

HUNGER 

I've been a hopeless sinner but I understand a 
saint, 

Their bend of weary knees and their contortions 
long and faint, 

And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hun- 
dred thousand pins, 

A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins. 

I love to wander widely but I understand a cell. 
Where you tell and tell your beads because you've 

nothing else to tell, 
Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild, 

fantastic tricks, 
Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix. 

I cannot speak for others but my inmost soul is 

torn 
With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn. 
There are moments when I would untread the paths 

that I have trod. 
I'm a haunter of the devil but I hunger after God. 

Gamaliel Bradford 

LIVE YOUR LIFE — THEN TAKE YOUR 
HAT 

Conscience is instinct bred in the house; 
Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin 
By an unnatural breeding in and in, 
I say, Turn it outdoors, 
Into the moors. 



54 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I love a life whose plot is simple, 

And does not thicken with every pimple, 

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, 

That makes the universe no worse than *t finds it. 

I love an earnest soul 

Whose mighty joy and sorrow 

Are not drowned in a bowl. 

And brought to life to-morrow; 

That lives one tragedy, 

And not seventy; 

A conscience worth keeping, 

Laughing, not weeping; 

A conscience wise and steady, 

And forever ready; 

Not changing with events, 

Dealing in compliments; 

A conscience exercised about 

Large things, where one may doubt. 

I love a soul not all of wood. 

Predestinated to be good, 

But true to the backbone 

Unto itself alone. 

And false to none; 

Born to its own affairs. 

Its own joys and own cares; 

By whom the work which God begun 

Is finished, and not undone; 

Taken up where He left off. 

Whether to worship or to scoff; 

If not good, why then evil. 

If not good god, good deviL 

Goodness! — you hypocrite, come out of that, 

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. 



THE LAUGHING PRAYER 55 

I have no patience towards 
Such conscientious cowards. 
Give me simple laboring folk, 
V/ho love their work, 
Whose virtue is a song 
To cheer God along. 

Henry David Thoreau 

THE LAUGHING PRAYER 

The sorry prayers go up to God 

Day after weary day, 
They whimper through the eternal blue 

And down the Milky Way. 

Deaf to the music of the stars, 

The children of desire. 
Beggars before the Throne of God, 

They wait for God to tire. 

The proletariat of Heaven 
Swarmed in the golden street 

One day when Michael's host came by 
Up to the Judgment Seat. 

Above the heavenly mansions 

Bright, streaming banners flowed, 

While cherubim and seraphim 
Were crowding in the road. 

And then a little, laughing prayer 

Came running from the sky, 
Along the golden gutters where 

The sorry prayers went by. 



56 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

It had no fear of anything, 

But in that holy place 
It found the very Throne of God 

And smiled up in His face. 

Then Michael waited in the road, 

For Michael understood, 
While God looked on the laughing prayer 

And found it sweet and good. 

So God was comforted. He said: 

"There still is hope for men. 
One man prays happily ! " And so 

He turned to care again. 

Louise Driscoll 

THE COAST OF COURAGE 

O Mighty Lord of Trade's high-running sea, 
Grant us an echo of that distant main. 
Beyond dark wastes of danger to attain 

The Coast of Courage ! Strand of Bravery I 

Grant an Assurance and a Hope more free 
That over stiller waters we may gain 
At length a vaster vision, not in vain. 

Of Thine eternal Opportunity ! 

Prepare a highway in this wilderness 
Of wanton ways of traffic, a new heart 
Of love and law and Justice in the Mart, 
A loftier view of Commerce, limitless, 
That sees no end therein Thou would'st not bless. 
No consummation other than Thou art ! 

Anonymous 



UNBELIEF 57 



UNBELIEF 

There is no unbelief; 
Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod 
And waits to see it push away the clod — • 
He trusts in God. 

Wlioever says when clouds are in the sky: 
"Be patient, heart; light breaketh by and by," 
Trusts the Most High. 

Wlioever sees *neath Winter*s field of snow 
The silent harvest of the future grow, 
God's power must know. 

Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
Knows God will keep. 

Whoever says, "To-morrow," "The Unknown," 
"The Future," trusts the Power alone 
He dares disown. 

The heart that looks on when eyelids close, 
And dares to live when life has woes — 
God's comfort knows. 

There is no unbelief; 
And day by day, unconsciously. 
The heart lives by that faith the lips deny — 
God knoweth vvhy ! 

Owen Meredith 



58 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



THE LAST CAMP-FIRE 

Scar not earth^s breast that I may have 
Somewhere above her heart a grave; 
Mine was a life whose swift desire 
Bent ever less to dust than fire; 
Then through the swift white path of flame 
Send back my soul to whence it came; 
From some^great peak, storm challenging, 
My death-fire to the heavens fling; 
The rocks my altar, and above 
The still eyes of the stars I love; 
No hymn, save as the midnight wind 
Comes whispering to seek his kind. 

Heap high the logs of spruce and pine, 
Balsam for spices and for wine; 
Brown cones, and knots a golden blur 
Of hoarded pitch, more sweet than myrrh; 
Cedar, to stream across the dark 
Its scented embers spark on spark; 
Long, shaggy boughs of juniper. 
And silvery, odorous sheaves of fir ; 
Spice-wood, to die in incense smoke 
Against the stubborn roots of oak, 
Red to the last for hate or love 
As that red stubborn heart above. 

Watch till the last pale ember dies, 
Till wan and low the dead pyre lies, 
Then let the thin white ashes blow 
To all earth's winds a finer snow; 



AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA 5Q 

There is no wind of hers but I 

Have loved it as it whistled by; 

No leaf whose life I would not share, 

No weed that is not some way fair; 

Hedge not my dust in one close urn, 

It is to these I would return, — 

The wild, free winds, the things that know 

No master's rule, no ordered row, — 

To be, if Nature will, at length 
Part of some great tree's noble strength; 
Growth of the grass; to live anew 
In many a wild-fiower's richer hue; 
Find immortality, indeed. 
In ripened heart of fruit and seed. 
Time grants not any man redress 
Of his broad law. forgetfulness; 
I parley not with shaft and stone, 
Content that in the perfume blown 
From next year's hillsides something sweet 
And mine, shall make earth more complete. 

Sharlot M. Hall 



AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA 

He who died at Azan sends 
This to comfort all his friends : 

Faithful friends! It lies, I know. 
Pale and white and cold as snow; 
And ye say, "Abdallah's dead!" — 
Weeping at the feet and head. 



6o SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I can see your falling tears, 
I can hear your sighs and prayers; 
Yet I smile and whisper this, — • 
"I am not the thing you kiss; 
Cease your tears, and let it lie; 
It was mine, it is not L" 

Sweet friends I What the women lave 

For its last bed of the grave, 

Is a tent which I am quitting, 

Is a garment no more fitting. 

Is a cage from which, at last. 

Like a hawk my soul hath pass'd. 

Love the inmate, not the room, — 

The wearer, not the garb, — the plume 

Of the falcon, not the bars 

Which kept him from these splendid stars. 

Loving friends! Be wise, and dry 
Straightway every weeping eye, — 
What ye lift upon the bier 
Is not worth a wistful tear. 
'T is an empty sea-shell, — one 
Out of which the pearl is gone; 
The shell is broken, it lies there; 
The pearl, the all, the soul, is here. 
'T is an earthen jar, whose lid 
Allah seal'd, the while it hid 
That treasure of his treasury, 
A mind that lov'd him ; let it lie I 
Let the shard be earth*s once more, 
Since the gold shines in his store! 



AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA 6i 



Allah glorious I Allah good I 
Now thy world is understood; 
Now the long, long wonder ends; 
Yet ye weep, my erring friends, 
While the man whom ye call dead, 
In unspoken bliss, instead, 
•Lives and loves you; lost, 't is true, 
By such light as shines for you; 
But in light ye cannot see 
Of unfulfill'd felicity,— 
In enlarging paradise. 
Lives a life that never dies. 

Farewell, friends! Yet not farewell; 
Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell. 
I am gone before your face, 
A moment's time, a little space. 
When ye come where I have stepp'd 
Ye will wonder why ye wept; 
Ye will know, by wise love taught, 
That here is all, and there is naught. 
Weep awhile, if ye are fain, — 
Sunshine still must follow rain; 
Only not at death, — for death, 
Now I know, is that first breath 
Which our souls draw when we enter 
Life, which is of all life centre. 

Be ye certain all seems love, 
View'd from Allah's throne above; 
Be ye stout of heart, and come 
Bravely onward to your home I 



62 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

La Allah ilia Allah! yeal 

Thou love divine ! Thou love ahvay I 

He that died at Azan gave 

This to those who made his grave. 

Edwin Arnold 



ONLY LAUGHTER IS SURE 

Send us Laughter, O gods, for our life is but 

vain; 
We are bruised by its rods, we are galled by its 

chain. 
What doth patience avail, or the strength to endure 
In the fight where we fail ? Only Laughter is sure ! 

Faith is comrade no more. Sorrow sees us and 

nods. 
From your generous store give us Laughter, O 

gods ; 
That with sword of it girt, and with helm of it 

crowned. 
We may battle unhurt, we may wander unbound ! 

Send us Laughter, great lords, for our woes are too 

deep 
To be served by the swords save of Laughter or 

Sleep! 
Send us Laughter, O gods, and the world is our 

own. 
From the cloud to the clods, from the cot to the 

throne I 



HYMN OF EMPEDOCLES 63 

It shall soften the sting of the whips that are 

whirled, 
And a balm it shall bring for the wounds of the 

world. 
It shall lighten the rods, it shall cover the sore; 
Send us Laughter, O gods, for our armour of warl 

W. H. Ogilvie 

MYSTERY 

What is this mystery that men call death? 

My friend before me lies; in all save breath 

He seems the same as yesterday. His face 

So Uke to life, so calm, bears not a trace 

Of that great change which all of us so dread. 

I gaze on him and say: He is not dead. 

But sleeps; and soon he will arise and take 

Me by the hand, I know he will awake 

And smile on me as he did yesterday; 

And he will have some gentle word to say, 

Some kindly deed to do; for loving thought 

Was warp and woof of which his life was wrought. 

He is not dead. Such souls forever live 

In boundless measure of the love they give. 

Jerome B. Bell 

HYMN OF EMPEDOCLES 

Is it so small a thing 
To have enjoy'd the sun, 
To have lived light in the spring, 
To have loved, to have thought, to have done; 
To have advanced true friends, and beat down baf- 
fling foes; 



64 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

That we must feign a bliss 
Of doubtful future date, 
And while we dream on this 
Lose all our present state, 
And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? 

Not much, I know, you prize 
What pleasures may be had, 
Who look on life with eyes 
Estranged, like mine, and sad : 
And yet the village churl feels the truth more 
than you ; 

Who^s loth to leave this life 
Which to him little yields : 
His hard-task'd, sunburnt wife, 
His often-labour'd fields; 
The boors with whom he talk'd, the coimtry 
spots he knew. 

But thou, because thou hear'st 
Men scoff at Heaven and Fate; 
Because the gods thou fear'st 
Fail to make blest thy state, 
Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys 
there are. 

I say, fear not ! Life still 
Leaves human effort scope. 
But, since life teems with ill, 
Nurse no extravagant hope. 
Because thon must not dream thou need'st 
not then despair, 

Matthew Arnold 



THE AGNOSTIC'S CREED 65 



DESERVINGS 

This is the height of our deserts: 
A little pity for life's hurts; 
A little rain, a little sun, 
A little sleep when work is done. 

A little righteous punishment, 
Less for our deeds than their intent; 
A little pardon now and then, 
Because we are but struggling men. 

A little light to show the way, 
A little guidance where we stray; 
A little love before we pass 
To rest beneath the kirkyard grass. 

A little faith, in days of change. 
When life is stark and bare and strange; 
A solace when our eyes are wet 
With tears of longing and regret. 

True it is that we cannot claim 
Unmeasured recompense or blame, 
Because our way of life is small: 
A little is the sum of all. 

Anonymous 

THE AGNOSTIC'S CREED 
At last I have ceased repining, at last I accept my 

fate ; 
I have ceased to beat at the Portal, I have ceased to 

knock at the Gate; 



66 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I have ceased to work at the Puzzle, for the Secret 

has ended my search, 
And I know that the Key is entrusted to never a 

creed nor church. 

They have threatened with lakes of fire, they have 

threatened with fetters of hell; 
They have offered me heights of heaven with their 

fields of asphodel; 
But the Threat and the Bribe are useless if Reason 

be strong and stout. 
And an honest man can never surrender an honest 

doubt. 

The fables of hell and of heaven are but worn-out 
Christmas toys, 

To coax or to bribe or to frighten the grown-up 
girls and boys; 

I have ceased to be an infant, I have traveled be- 
yond their span — 

It may do for women and children, but it never will 
do for a man. 

They are all alike, these churches : Mohammedan, 

Christian, Parsee; 
You are vile, you are curst, you are outcast, if you 

be not as they be; 
But my Reason stands against them, and I go as it 

bids me go; 
Its commands are as calls of a trumpet, and I follow 

for weal or woe. 



THE AGNOSTIC'S CREED 67 

But 01 it is often cheerless, and 01 it is often 

chill, 
And I often sigh to heaven as my path grows steep 

and still. 
I have left behind my comrades, with their prattle 

and childish noise; 
My boyhood now is behind me, with all of its 

broken toys I 

O! that God of gods is glorious, the emperor of 

every land; 
He carries the moon and the planets in the palm of 

His mighty hand; 
He is girt with the belt of Orion, he is Lord of the 

suns and stars, 
A wielder of constellations, of Canopus, Arcturus 

and Marsl 

I believe in Love and Duty, I believe in the True 

and Just; 
I believe in the common kinship of everything born 

from dust. 
I hope that the Right will triumph, that the scep- 

tered Wrong will fall. 
That Death will at last be defeated, that the Grave 

will not end all. 

I believe in the martyrs and heroes who have died 

for the sake of Right ; 
And I promise, like them, to follow in my Reason's 

faithful light; 



68 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

If my Reason errs in judgment, I but honestly 

strive as I can; 
If a God decrees my downfall, I shall stand it like a 

man. 

Walter Malone 

THE SUN-WORSHIPERS 

The trail is high whereon we ride, with all the 
w^orld below to see, 
The cleft of canon, sweep of range and winter- 
white of lonely peak; 
Lean foothold on the mountain-side, and on, be- 
yond, The Mystery, 
The unattained, the hidden land we may not find, 
but ever seek. 

Content were vain. Our discontent, divine, forever 
urges on 
Through stress and danger, scorned or shared, 
though jomney's end be never won: 
Say you our days are vainly spent whose eyes have 
looked upon the dawn 
From high Chilao's morning crest, and bathed 
our faces in the Sun? 

We worship not what men have made : no thing so 
small is our desire. 
The little words of men that die, the little 
thoughts of men that dream 
Shall perish in their utterance : and build for these 
an altar fire? 
Our creed is written in the sky, our song in the 
eternal stream. 



MY AIM 69 

We journey on from star to star, nor shall we find a 
dwelling-place, 
Nor yet implore surcease from toil: to be and to 
adore, is all: 
Beholding dimly from afar the glory of the Hidden 
Face, 
Our worship ever our reward, the Quest our 
golden coronal. 

Henry Herbert Knihbs 

A LAST APPEAL 

somewhere, somewhere, God unknown, 

Exist and be! 

1 am dying; I am all alone; 

I must have thee I 

God ! God I my sense, my soul, my all 

Dies in the cry: — 
Saw'st thou the faint star flame and fall? 

Ah I it was L 

Frederic William Henry Myers 

MY AIM 

I live for those who love me, whose hearts are kind 

and true. 
For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits 

my spirit too ; 
For all human ties that bind me, for the task by 

God assigned me; 
For the bright hopes yet to find me and the good 

that I can do. 



70 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I live to learn their story who suffered for my 

sake; 
To emulate their glory and follow in their wake : 
Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, the heroic of all 

ages, 
"Whose deeds crowd history^s pages, and Time's 

great volume make. 

I live to hold communion with all that is divine. 

To feel there is a union 'twixt nature's heart and 
mine; 

To profit by affliction, reap truth from fields of fic- 
tion, 

Grow wiser from conviction, and fulfil God's grand 
design. 

I live to hail the season, by gifted ones foretold. 
When man shall live by reason, and not alone by 

gold; 
When man to man united, and every wrong thing 

righted, 
The whole world shall be lighted, as Eden was of 

old. 

I live for those who love me, for those who know me 

true; 
For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits 

my spirit too; 
For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong 

that needs resistance. 
For the future in the distance and the good that I 

can do. 

G. Linnzus Banks 



WE LODGE HIM IN THE MANGER 71 

WE LODGE HIM IN THE MANGER 

Yet if His Majesty, our sovereign lord, 

Should of his own accord 

Friendly himself invite, 

And say "I'll be your guest to-morrow night," 

How should we stir ourselves, call and command 

All hands to work! "Let no man idle stand. 

"Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall; 

See they be fitted all; 

Let there be room to eat 

And order taken that there v/ant no meat. 

See every sconce and candlestick made bright, 

That without tapers they may give a light. 

"Look to the presence: are the carpets spread, 

The dazie o'er the head, 

The cushions in the chairs, 

And all the candles lighted on the stairs? 

Perfume the chambers, and in any case 

Let each man give attendance in his place!" 

Thus, if a king were coming, would we do; 

And 't were good reason too; 

For 't is a duteous thing 

To show all honour to an earthly king, 

And after all our travail and our cost, 

So he be pleased, to think no labour lost. 

But at the coming of the King of Heaven 

All's set at six and seven; 

We wallow in our sin, 

Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. 



72 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

We entertain Him always like a stranger, 
And, as at first, still lodge Him in the manger. 

Anonymous 

IF THIS WERE FAITH! 

God ! If this were enough. 

That I see things bare to the buff 

And up to the buttocks in mire. 

That I ask nor hope nor hire. 

Not in the husk, 

Nor dawn beyond the dusk, 

Nor life beyond death: 

God — if this were faith ! 

Having felt Thy wind in my face 

Spit sorrow and disgrace. 

Having seen Thy evil doom 

In Golgotha and Khartoum, 

And the brutes, the work of Thine hands, 

Fill with injustice lands 

And stain with blood the sea. 

If still in my veins the glee 

Of the black night and the sun 

And the lost battle run ; 

If, an adept. 

The iniquitous lists I still accept 

With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, 

And still to battle and perish for a dream of good 

God — if that were enough I 

If to feel in the ink of the slough 
And the sink of the mire 
Veins of glory and fire 



DEFERRED 73 

Run through and transpierce and transpire, 

And a secret purpose of glory fill each part, 

And the answering glory of battle fill my heart; 

To thrill with the joy of girded men, 

To go on forever and fail, and go on again, 

And be mauled to the earth and arise, 

And contend for the shade of a word and a thing 

not seen with the eyes — 
With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night 
That somehow the right is the right. 
And the smooth shall bloom from the rough: 
Lord — if that were enough 1 

Robert Louis Stevenson 



DEFERRED 

All things at last I win — but all too late. 
Like harvests gathered after he who sowed 
Has died of hunger; or a debt, long owed, 

The creditor dead, paid heirs of his estate. 

Upon my eyelids hangs a burning weight 

Of tears, now, looking on the long, long road 
And thinking of the slavery and the goad 

In empty years when little things seemed great. 

Is Hope's high goal a picture hung in air, 

The desert phantasm of the palm and Spring? 

Yet even so, it still is real somewhere, 
And that foregleam is so divine a thing 
It works the forming of the spirit's wing — 

Desire creative mastering all despair I 

Stokely S. Fisher 



74 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

"FEAR NOT THE MENACE" 

Life as it is I Accept it; it is thine! 
The God that gave it, gave it for thy good. 
The God that made it had not been divine 
Could he have set thee poison for thy food. 

Abstain not; Life and Love, like night and day, 
Offer themselves to us on their own terms, 
— Not ours. Accept their bounty while ye may, 
Before we be accepted by the worms. 

We rail at Time and Chance, and break our hearts 

To make the glory of to-day endure. 

Is the sun dead because the day departs? 

And are the suns of Life and Love less sure? 

Fear not the menace of the bye-and-bye. 
To-day is ours ; to-morrow Fate must give. 
Stretch out your hands and eat, although ye die ! 
Better to die than never once to live. 

Richard Hovey 

THROUGH NATURE UP TO GOD 

Where once Zenobia's bastions rose, 
The wind that stirs the desert sand 

Now softly sighs and sadly blows 
O'er Tadmor's desolated land; — • 

The dirge for life and glory fled, 

The requiem for centuries dead. 

The towers of Troy are sunk in tears, 
The golden domes of Tyre are gone, 



GOD IN MY GARDEN 



And only wandering echo hears 

The vagrant name of Babylon; 
And ravens flit and serpents hiss 
O'er what was once Persepolis. 

Yet always the aspiring Soul, — 
The Angel in the mortal clod, 

The Vision that defies control, — 
Will look through Nature up to God; 

And strive, in word and form, to speak 

The beauty it was born to seek. 

And not in vain, from age to age, 

In forms of grandeur and of grace, 
Is writ on more than History's page, 
The progress of the human race — ■ 
The rise of mind and feeling, shown 
In golden poems made of stone. 

William Winter 



GOD IN MY GARDEN 

A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot I 
Rose plot. 

Fringed pool, 
Fern'd grot — 

The veriest school 

Of peace; and yet the fool 
Contends that God is not — 
Not God ! In gardens ! When the eve is cool? 

Nay, but I have a sign; 

*T is very sure God walks in mine. 

Thomas Edward Brown 



76 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



A LITTLE WORK 

A little work, a little play 

To keep us going — and so, good-day! 

A little warmth, a little light 

Of lovers bestowing — and so, good-night! 

A little fun, to match the sorrow 

Of each day's growing — and so, good-morrow ! 

A little trust that when we die 

We reap our sowing ! And so, good-bye ! 

George Du Maurier 



THE DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST 

Take yoiir ivory Christ away : 

No dying god shall have my knee 

While live gods breathe in this wild wind 
And shout from yonder dashing sea. 

When March brings back the Adonis flower — 
No more the white processions meet 

With incense to their risen lord 
About the pillared temple's feet. 

From tusk of boar, from thrust of spear 
The dead rise not. At Eastertide 

The same sun dances on their graves — • 
Love's darling and the Crucified. 

Yet still the year's returning tide 

Flows greenly roimd each ruined plinth, 



THE DYING PANTHEIST 77 

Breaking on fallen shafts in foam 
Of crocus and of hyacinth: 

Tossing a spray of swallows high, 

To flutter lightly on the breeze 
And fleck with tiny spots of shade 

The sunshine on the broken frieze. 

I know the gray-green asphodels 
Still sheet the dim Elysian mead, 

And ever by dark Lethe's wells 
The poppy sheds her ghostly seed. 

And once — O once! — when sunset lay 
Blood-red across the winter sea, 

Where on the sands we drained our flasks 
And danced and cried our Evoe! — 

Among the tossing cakes of ice 
And spouting of the frozen spray, 

We saw their white limbs twist and whirl — 
The ancient sea-gods at their play. 

The gold-brown liquor burned my heart, 
The icy tempest stung my brow: 

The twanging of Apollo's lyre — • 
I heard it as I tear it now. 

O no, the old gods are not dead: 

I think that they will never die; 
But I, who lie upon this bed 

In mortal angiiish — what am I? 



78 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

A wave that rises with a breath 
Above the infinite watery plain, 

To foam and sparkle in the sun 
A moment ere it sink again. 

The eternal undulation runs: 
A man, I die: perchance to be. 

Next life, a white-throat on the wind, 
A daffodil on Tempe's lea. 

They lied who said that Pan was dead: 
Life was, life is, and life shall be. 

So take away your crucifix — 
The everliving gods for me! 

Henry A. Beers 

THE SEEKER 

The creeds he wrought of dream and thought 
Fall from him at the touch of life. 
His old gods fail him in the strife — 

Withdrawn, the heavens he sought 1 

Vanished the miracles that led. 

The cloud at noon, the flame at night; 

The vision that he wing'd and sped 

Falls backward, baffled, from the height; 

Yet in the wreck of these he stands 
Upheld by something grim and strong; 
Some stubborn instinct lifts a song 

And nerves him, heart and hands ; 

He does not dare to call it hope; — 
It is not aught that seeks reward — 



THE SEEKER 79 



Nor faith, that up some sunward slope 
Runs aureoled to meet its lord; 

It touches something elder far 

Than faith or creed or thought in man, 
It was ere yet these lived and ran 

Like light from star to star; 

It touches that stark, primal need 
That from unpeopled voids and vast, 

Fashioned the first crude, childish creed, — 
And still shall fashion, till the last! 

For one word is the tale of men: 
They fling their ikons to the sod. 
And having trampled down a god 

They seek a god again I 

Stripped of his creeds inherited. 
Bereft of all his sires held true, 

Amid the wreck of visions dead 

He thrills at touch of visions new. . . . 

He wings another Dream for flight. . . . 
He seeks beyond the outmost dawn 
A god he set there . . . and, anon, 

Drags that god from the height I 

But aye from ruined faiths and old 

That droop and die, fall bruised seeds; 
And when new flowers and faiths unfold, 
They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier 
creeds. 

Don Marquis 



8o SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



"ALIENI TEMPORIS FLORES" 

(^*And wise men hold in due respect 
the blossoms of other days.") 

Let the dead past bury its dead? 

No one denies the need of this, 

The utter childlike human need; 

Nor that dead dreams, dead tears, dead loves, 

Should lie perdu 

Within the vault of time; 

Nor that the snows of other years 

Must melt away 

Before the hot procession of our headlong days. 

But let it be no more than this ; 

Let us not seize upon the hours 

When blood ran tumbling to the lips, 

And make of memory a thing of scorn; 

Let us not taint the honest wine of old desire 

With cheap regret : 

The cheapest pain within all mortal range; 

Let us not say that where we gave and took. 

Full-hearted and full-hoped and daring all, 

The world was aught the poorer for our dreams. 

Let the dead past bury its dead? 

Yes — but in full honor, too ! 

Not only for the flame that was its breath, 

But for the spark 

That somewhere smolders in the grave. 

G. B. C. 



MAKE NO DESPERATE SEARCH 8i 

MAKE NO DESPERATE SEARCH 
FOR GOD 

Come out to our house any week-end in June, 
When dandelions riot in the grass: 
And drink the yellow floods of afternoon, 
Poured from a sky of blue and quivering glass. 
Go through the arbor where the ramblers mass 
In crimson flame against white lattices: 
Open the easy swinging gate, and pass 
Beneath the birch, between the maple trees 
With tops a-tremble in the southwest breeze: 
Follow along the curving gravel walk 
Up to the terrace top, where, as you please, 
Tobacco, high adventure, casual talk. 
And journey's end await, if you are one 

Who would live much and quietly in the sun. 

• • • 

On Sunday morning you may go to church 

In any way you please, or not at all. 

There is a stately one beneath our birch, 

A lowlier one out by the garden wall: 

Methodist, Catholic, Episcopal, 

Are all within an easy morning's stroll; 

But if these venerable creeds appal, 

A garden spade may benefit your soul; 

Or some eternal verity unroll 

As you spread paint upon the kitchen screens, 

Or fix fresh-cut nasturtiums in a bowl, 

Or hold communion with the lima beans. 

Or you may put your clean white flannels on 

And meet it as you ramble through the law^ 



82 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

But do not make a desperate search for God 

Lest you offend his quiet dignity. 

The week-end is no time to pant or plod 

The rock-strewn roads of any Calvary. 

It is a time to live in the sun, and see 

Your favorite god by glimpses, everywhere. 

I find him lurking quite persistently 

In our young daughter's laugh, and in her hair; 

And if the baby smiles, he lingers there: 

But when the baby cries, he understands 

And straightway slips without offense or care 

Into my wife's brown eyes and her white hands; 

And many a moonlit night in fall he comes 

To dance among the red chrysanthemums. 

John French Wilson 

JESUS THE CARPENTER 

"Is n*t this Joseph's son?" — ay, it is He; 
Joseph the carpenter — same trade as me — 
I thought as I 'd find it — I knew it was here — 
But my sight 's getting queer. 

I don't know right where as his shed must ha' 

stood — 
But often, as I've been a-planing my wood, 
I 've took off my hat, just with thinking of He 
At the same work as me. 

He warn't that set up that He could n't stoop 

down 
And work in the country for folks in the town; 
And I '11 warrant He felt a bit pride, like I 've done 
At a good job begun. 



ATOMS AND AGES 83 

The parson he knows that I'll not make too free, 
But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be, 
When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew, 
And has thoughts a few. 

I think of as how not the parson hissen, 
As is teacher and father and shepherd o' men, 
Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed, 
Where He earned his own bread. 

And when I goes home to my missus, says she, 
"Are ye wanting your key?" 

For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the 
shed, 
(We've been forty years wed.) 

So I comes right away by mysen, with the book. 
And I turns the old pages and has a good look 
For the text as I've found, as tells me as He 
Were the same trade as me. 

Why don't I mark it? Ah, many says so, 
But I think I'd as lief, with your leave, let it go: 
It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden — 
Unexpected, you know! 

Catherine C. Liddell 



ATOMS AND AGES 

Just as I wonder at the twofold screen 
Of twisted innocence that you would plait 
For eyes that uncourageously await 
The coming of a kingdom that has been, 



84 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

So do I wonder what God's love can mean 
To you that all so strangely estimate 
The purpose and the consequent estate 
Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen. 

No, I have not your backward faith to shrink 
Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home 
To find Him in the names of buried men; 
Nor your ingenious recreance to think 
We cherish, in the life that is to come, 
The scattered features of dead friends again. 

Never until our souls are strong enough 
To plunge into the crater of the Scheme — 
Triumphant in the flash there to redeem 
Love's handsel — and forevermore to slough, 
Like cerements at a played-out masque, the 

rough 
And reptile skins of us whereon we set 
The stigma of scared years — are we to get 
Where atoms and the ages are one stuff. 

Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste 
Of life in the beneficence divine 
Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine 
That we have squandered in sin's frail distress, 
Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste, 
The mead of Thought's prophetic endlessness. 
Edwin Arlington Robinson 



THE PAGAN 85 



THE PAGAN 

But I shall feel the wind again, 

Shall drink the scent of flower and pine: 
And I shall bask in April suns 

Where budding willow boughs are mine, 
The stars will beat across the night, 

The waves will shout their tumult then; 
And I shall answer in my joy. 

My joy at praising life again. 

For I have lived with waving grass 

And roots and golden sap astir; 
The earth has held me to her breast, 

And I shall laugh again with her. 
I have loved clouds that drift and pass, 

My heart has flamed to eager bloom 
In gold and crimson poppy leaves 

And rose perfume. 

And I shall dance beneath the light 

Of silver crescent moons in spring, 
And I shall sleep upon the leaves 

Of autumn's yellow mouldering. 
For somewhere, there will open wide 

A little magic, outer door. 
And I shall pass beyond to find 

The loveliness I knew before. 

Rose Henderson 



86 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



"HE WHOM A DREAM HATH POSSESSED" 

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no 
more of doubting, 
For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouth- 
ing of words he scorns ; 
Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a 
knightly shouting. 
And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth 
a million morns. 

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no 
more of roaming; 
All roads and the flowing of waves and the speed- 
iest flight he knows ; 
But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever 
homing, 
And going, he comes; and coming, he heareth a 
call and goes. 

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no 
more of sorrow. 
At death and the dropping of leaves and the fad- 
ing of suns he smiles. 
For a dream remembers no past and scorns the de- 
sire of a morrow. 
And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the 
ultimate isles. 

He whom a dream hath possessed treads the im- 
palpable marches. 
From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a 
laughing star, 



APRIL THEOLOGY 87 

And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eter- 
nal arches, 
And rides God*s battle-field in a flashing and 
golden car. 

Shaemas O'Sheel 



APRIL THEOLOGY 

Oh to be breathing and hearing and feeling and 

seeing! 
Oh the ineffably glorious privilege of being! 
All of the World's lovely girlhood, unfleshed and 

made spirit. 
Broods out in the sunlight this morning — I see it, 

I hear it! 

So read me no text, O my Brothers, and preach me 
no creeds; 

I am busy beholding the glory of God in His deeds ! 

See ! Everywhere buds coming out, blossoms flam- 
ing, bees humming! 

Glad athletic growers up-reaching, things striving, 
becoming! 

Oh, I know in my heart, in the sun-quickened, 

blossoming soul of me, 
This something called self is a part, but the world is 

the whole of me! 
I am one with these growers, these singers, these 

earnest becomers — 
Co-heirs of the summer to be and past eeons of 

summers! 



88 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I kneel not nor grovel; no prayer with my lips shall 

I fashion. 
Close-knit in the fabric of things, fused with on© 

common passion — 
To go on and become something greater — we 

growers are one; 
None more in the world than a bird and none less 

than the sun; 
But all woven into the glad indivisible Scheme, 
God fashioning out in the Finite a part of his 

dream ! 

Out here where the world-love is flowing, unfet- 
tered, unpriced, 

I feel all the depth of the man-soul and girl-heart 
of Christ I 

'Mid this riot of pink and white flame in this mira- 
cle weather. 

Soul to soul, merged in one, God and I dream the 
vast dream together. 

We are one in the doing of things that are done and 
to be: 

I am part of my God as a raindrop is part of the sea I 

What ! House me my God? Take me in where no 
blossoms are blowing? 

Roof me in from the blue, wall me in from the 
green and the wonder of growing? 

Parcel out what already is mine, like a vendor of 
staples? 

See! Yonder my God burns revealed in the sap- 
drunken maples! 

John G. Neihardt 



THE VISION SPLENDID" 89 



THE CERTAIN VICTORY 

Why should I sit in doubt or fear? If I 

Awake some morning from that dreaded sleep 

To find myself new-born and lifted high, 
Then I will turn, and, looking o'er the deep 

That lies beneath me, shout for glee and throw 
A last good-by at Pain and Fear, below. 

But what if, at the last, no light shall break — 

If this is all — if when I fall asleep 
No angel's voice shall sweetly cry ** Awake,'* 
And there shall be but Nothing, dark and 
deep — 
Ah, well, I shall not care if it be so, 

I'll triumph still, for I shall never know. 

S. E. Kiser 



"THE VISION SPLENDID" 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And Cometh from afar; 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home: 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 
But He beholds the light, and whence it flows. 

He sees it in his joy; 



90 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
And by the Vision Splendid 
Is on his way attended; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day. 

Wordsworth 



"SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT 
AVAILETH" 

Say not the struggle naught availeth, 
The labour and the wounds are vain, 

The enemy faints not, nor faileth. 
And as things have been they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 

It may be, in yon smoke conceal 'd. 
Your comrades chase e'en now the flyers, 

And, but for you, possess the field. 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,' 
Seem here no painful inch to gain. 

Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

And not by eastern windows only. 

When daylight comes, comes in the light; 

In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly ! 
But westward, look, the land is bright I 
Arthur Hugh Clough 



MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH 91 



MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH 

You promise heavens free from strife, 
Pure truth, and perfect change of will; 

But sweet, sweet is this human life, 
So sweet, I fain would breathe it still: 

Your chilly stars I can forego, 

This warm, kind world is all I know. 

You say there is no substance here, 

One great reality above: 
Back from that void I shrink in fear, 

And child-like hide myself in love : 
Show me what angels feeK Till then, 
I cling, a mere weak man, to men. 

You bid me lift my mean desires 
From faltering lips and fitful veins 

To sexless souls, ideal choirs. 

Unwearied voices, wordless strains: 

My mind with fonder welcome owns 

One dear, dead friend's remembered tones. 

Forsooth the present we must give 
To that which cannot pass away; 

All beauteous things for which we live 
By laws of time and space decay. 

But oh, the very reason why 

I clasp them, is because they die. 

William Johnson Cory 



92 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

THE SCIENTIST SPEAKS 

First, I abjure all dim unreasoning patter 
Wherewith the ignorant befool their land; 

Because I read among the Laws of Matter 
The limitations of the human mind. 

Then I will not believe, till I have cloven 
Into the very heart of Law and Act ; 

That no one need accept what I have proven 
Till he has put it to the proof of Fact. 

Nor will I let the teachings of another 
Absolve me from my task of finding out, 

Just as I will not force upon my brother 

The answer I have made to mine own doubt. 

I will be true to this, though all may doubt me, 
I will write on, and over every sneer. 

So will I build my Heaven here about me 
And live my life within it, now and here. 

Charles Henry Mackintosh 

"CORONEMUS NOS ROSIS ANTEQUAM 
MARCESCANT" 

Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and re- 
joice, 
With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice ! 
The changeable world to our joy is unjust, 

All treasure *s uncertain, 

Then down with your dust ! 
In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence, 
For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence. 



CORONEMUS NOS ROSIS 93 

We'll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly, 
Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy: 
Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea, 

Dame Venus, love's lady. 

Was born of the sea: 
With her and with Bacchus we'll tickle the sense. 
For we shall be past it a himdred years hence. 

Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is 

crowned 
And kills with each glance as she treads on the 

ground, 
Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such 

splendor 
That none but the stars 
Are thought fit to attend her. 
Though now she be pleasant and sfweet to the 

sense, 
Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence. 

Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears, 
Turn all our tranquill'ty to sighs and to tears? 
Let's eat, drink and play till the worms do corrupt 
us, 
'T is certain, "Post mortem 
Nulla voluptas." 
For health, wealth, and beauty, wit, learning and 

sense. 
Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence. 

Thomas Jordan 



^4 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

WINE OF OMAR KHAYYAM 

He rode the flame-winged dragon-steed of Thought 
Through Space and Darkness, seeking Heav'n 

and Hell; 
And searched the furthest staxs where souls 
might dwell 
To find God's justice; and in vain he sought. 

Then, looking on the dusk-eyed girl who brought 
His dream-filled wine beside his garden well, 
He said : "Her kiss; the wine-jug's drowsy spell; 

Eulbul; the roses; death; — all else is naught: 

"So drink till that." —What! drink, because the 
abyss 
Of Nothing waits? Because there is for man 
But one swift hour of consciousness and light? 

No — just because we have no life but this, 

Turn it to use; be noble while you can; 
Search, help, create ; then pass into the night. 

Eugene Lee- Hamilton 



THE PROBLEM 

I like a church; I like a cowl; 
I love a prophet of the soul; 
And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: 
Yet not for all his faith can see 
Would I that cowled churchman be. 
Why should the vest on him allure, 
Which I could not on me endure? 



THE PROBLEM 95 



Not from a vain or shallow thought 

His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 

Never from lips of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle; 

Out from the heart of Nature rolled 

The burdens of the Bible old; 

The litanies of nations came, 

Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 

Up from the burning core below, — 

The canticles of love and woe: 

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 

And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 

Wrought in a sad sincerity; 

Himself from God he could not free; 

He builded better than he knew; — 

The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest 

Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? 

Or how the fish outbuilt her shell. 

Painting with morn each annual cell? 

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds 

To her old leaves new myriads? 

Such and so grew these holy piles, 

Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 

As the best gem upon her zone. 

And Morning opes with haste her lids, 

To gaze upon the Pyramids; 

O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, 

As on its friends, with kindred eye; 

For, out of Thought's interior sphere. 

These wonders rose to upper air; 



96 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

And Nature gladly gave them place, 
Adopted them into her race, 
And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat. 

These temples grew as grows the grass; 

Art might obey, but not surpass. 

The passive Master lent his hand 

To the vast soul that o*er him planned; 

And the same power that reared the shrine 

Bestrode the tribes that knelt witkin. 

Ever the fiery Pentecost 

Girds with one flame the countless host, 

Trances the heart through chanting choirs, 

And through the priest the mind inspires. 

The word unto the prophet spoken 

Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 

The word by seers or sibyls told. 

In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, 

Still floats upon the morning v/ind, 

Still whispers to the willing mind. 

One accent of the Holy Ghost 

The heedless world hath never lost. 

I know what say the fathers wise, — 

The Book itself before me lies, — 

Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 

And he who blent both in his line, 

The younger Golden Lips or mines, 

Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. 

His words are music in my ear, 

I see his cowled portrait dear; 

And yet, for all his faith could see, 

I would not the good bishop be. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson 



THE PHANTOM CARAVAN 97 



THE PHANTOM CARAVAN 

And if the wine you drink, the lip you press, 
End in what all begins and ends in — Yes; 

Think then you are To-day what Yesterday 
You were — To-morrow you shall not be less. 

So when the Angel of the darker drink 
At last shall find you by the river-brink, 
And, offering his cup, invite your Soul 
Forth to your lips to quaff — you shall not shrink. 

Why, if the Soul can fling the dust aside, 
And naked on the air of Heaven ride, 

Wer't not a shame — wer't not a shame for 
him 
In this clay carcase crippled to abide? 

'T is but a tent where takes his one-day's rest 
A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; 

The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
Strikes, and prepares it for another guest. 

And fear not lest existence closing your 

Account, and mine, should know the like no more; 

The Eternal Saki from that bowl has pour'd 
Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour. 

When you and I behind the veil are past, 

Oh but the long long while the world shall last 

Which of our coming and departure heeds 
As the Sev'n Seas should heed a pebble-cast. 



98 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

A moment's halt — a momentary taste 
Of Being from the well amid the waste — 

And lo I — the phantom caravan has reach' d 
The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste I 

Omar Khayyam 
Translated by Edward Fitzgerald 

THE MOVING FINGER WRITES 

I sent my soul through the invisible, 
Some letter of that after-life to spell: 

And by and by my Soul return'd to me, 
And answer'd : " I myself am Heav'n and Hell." 

Heav'n but the vision of fulfilPd desire, 
And Hell the shadow of a soul on fire, 

Cast on the darkness into which ourselves, 
So late emerged from, shall so soon expire. 

We are no other than a moving row 

Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go 

Round with this sun-illumin'd lantern held 
In midnight by the Master of the Show;- 

Impotent pieces of the game He plays 
Upon this checker-board of nights and days ; 
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and 
slays, 
And one by one back in the closet lays. 

The ball no question makes of ayes and noes 
^But right and left as strikes the Player goes; 

And He that toss'd you down into the field. 
He knows about it all — He knows — He knows I 



NIRVANA 99 



The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, 

Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 

Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. 

» 
And that inverted bowl they call the Sky, 

Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die. 

Lift not your hands to It for help — for It 

As impotently rolls as you or I. 

Omar Khayyam 

Translated by Edward Fitzgerald 

NIRVANA 

Sleep will He give His beloved? 
Not dreams, but the precious guerdon of deepest 
rest? 
Aye, surely 1 Look on the grave-closed eyes. 
And cold hands folded on tranquil breast. 
Will not the All-Great be just and forgive? 
For He knows (though we make no prayer nor 
cry) 
How our lone souls ached when our pale star waned. 

How we watch the promiseless sky. 
Life hereafter? Ah, no : we have lived enough. 

Life eternal? Pray God it may not be so. 
Have we not suffered and striven, loved and en- 
dured. 
Run through the whole wide gamut of passion 
and woe? 

Strangest illusion I Sprung from a fevered habit of 
hope — 
Wild enthusiast's dream of blatant perfection at 
best 



loo SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Give us darkness for anguished eyes, stillness for 
weary feet, 
Silence and sleep; but no heaven of glittering, 
loud unrest. 
No more the life-long labour of smoothing the 
stone-strewn way ; 
No more the shuddering outlook athwart the 
sterile plain, 
Where every step we take, every word we say. 
Each warm, living hand that we cling to, is but a 
fence against pain. 

And nothing may perish, but lives again? Where? 

Out of thought, out of sight? 
And where is your cresset*s flame that the rough 

wind slew last night? 

Rosamund Marriott Watson 



STARS IN THE MIST 

I have followed the sins of reckless youth 

With the Devil to time the dance. 
And farther and farther I drift from Truth 

As the hopeless years advance ; 
Roimd me and over the mists are spread, 

With the pathway hard to find. 
And the roar of the flames of Hell ahead 

And the bridges burnt behind. 

But I ask no help of the gods on high, 

On the Devil I will not lean. 
And I will not drop to my knees, not I, 

For the whole world in between; 



ONE PATH loi 



For, a-shirie on the gates of the Future barred, 

Two stars in the darkness move 
To guide me: the star of a man's regard 

And the star of a woman's love. 

I shall know no doubt, I shall hold no fear, 

I shall suffer and make no sign, 
As long as those stars in the night burn clear 

And the way of those stars be mine; 
And I shall go down to the Deep Abyss 

With a scorn of the fears of old 
If Fortune will leave me that true girPs kiss 

And that true man's hand to hold. 

Will H. Ogilvie 

ONE PATH 

Outside the Earthly Paradise, 
Beneath its great gold walls, 

I walk a little, grass-blurred path 
Where simlight seldom falls. 

I try no more the guarded gates 

That will not let me in; 
I cease to wonder what the cause, 

What accident, or sin. 

I walk the lonely path that's mine, 

My heart and I employ 
Our solitude in songs that hymn 

The near-by Kingdom's joy. 

And once while singing thus, we heard 
Far-off and friendly cries 



102 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

And saw, high up, our happy kin, 
Love in their lovely eyes. 

Then on alone ! . . . Where leads my path 

Or ends I can not tell; 
Outside the Earthly Paradise 

I know, — but that is well. 

William Alexander Percy 

KRITERION 

I see the spire, 

I see the throng, 
I hear the choir, 
I hear the song; 
I listen to the anthem, while 
It pours its volume down the aisle; 
I listen to the splendid rhyme 
That, with a melody sublime. 
Tells of some far-off, fadeless clime — 
Of man and his finality. 
Of hope, and immortality. 

Oh, theme of themes! 
Are men mistaught? 
Are hopes like dreams, 
To come to naught? 
Is all the beautiful and good 
Delusive and misunderstood? 

And has the soul no forward reach?, 
And do indeed the facts impeach 
The theories the teachers teach? 
And is this immortality 
Delusion or reality? 



NOTHINGNESS 103 



What hope reveals 

Mind tries to clasp, 
But soon it reels 
With broken grasp. 
No chain yet forged on anvil's brink 
Was stronger than its weakest link; 
And are there not along this chain 
Imperfect links that snap in twain 
When caught in ^gic's tensile strain? 
And is not immortality 
The child of ideality? 

And yet — at times — 

We get advice 
That seems like chimes 
From paradise; 
The soul doth sometimes seem to be 
In sunshine which it cannot see; 
At times the spirit seems to roam 
Beyond the land, above the foam, 
Back to some half-forgotten home. 
Perhaps — this immortality 
May be indeed reality. 

Eugene F. Ware 



NOTHINGNESS 

Behind the hosts of suns and stars, behind 
The rushing of the chariots of the wind, 
Behind all noises and all shapes of things. 
And men and deeds — behind the blaze of kiags. 
Princes and paladins and potentates — 
An immense, solitary Spectre waits. 



T04 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

It has no shape : it has no sound : it has 
No place : it has no time : it is, and was, 
And will be : it is never more nor less, 
Nor glad, nor sad. Its name is Nothingness. 
Power walketh high: and Misery doth crawl: 
And the clepsydra drips : and the sands fall 
Down in the hour-glass: and the shadows sweep 
Around the dial: and men wake, and sleep. 
Live, strive, regret, forget, and love, and hate, 
And know it not. This spectre saith: "I wait." 
And at last it beckons, and they pass. 
And still the red sands fall within the glass: 
And still the shades around the dial sweep: 
And still the water-clock doth drip and weep : 
And this is alL 

Owen Meredith 



THE AWAKENING 

I 

Outward from the planets are blown the fumes of 

thought, 
And the breath of prayer drifts out and makes a 
mist between the stars; 

The void shall be void no longer, 
And the caverns of infinity shall be fulfilled of 
spirit; 

For in the wilderness between the worlds a sen- 
tience struggles to awaken, 

Passions and ghosts and visions gather into a 
Form. 



THE AWAKENING 105 

The God that we have worshipped for a million 

years begins to be, 
And he whom we have prayed to creates himself 

out of the stuff of our prayers. 

His wings are still heavy with chaos, 
And his piciions are holden down as with a weight of 
slumber; 

His face is ambiguous, 

His countenance is uncertain behind the veils of 
space; 

He has not speech, 

He has but only thunder for his voice; 

But the mornings gather to shape his eye, 
And the fire of many dawns has thrilled his twilight 
with a prescience of vision. 

n 

From myriad altars a reek of incense, 
And outward from the constellations there leaps 
the flame of burning prophets; 

There goes forth the breath of lovely purpose, 
As a south wind bearing seeds over a meadow it 
goes forth across the firmament; 

There arises a dew from the bruised foreheads of 

martyrs, 
And the broken hearts of the just, of them that have 

loved justice, are dissolved into a bloody 

dew; 



io6 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Out from the populated spheres a mist, 
And from the peopled worlds a breeding fog: 

And in the mist a God gathers unto Himself Form, 

and apparels himself in Being; 
For they that have desired a God create him from 

the stuff of that desire. 

in 

In the nebular chasms there is a shaping soul, 
And a light begins to glow in the dark abyss; 

That which is to be draws to itself what has been 

and what is. 
He drinks up the hopes of them that were as a sun 

sucks up water; 

He builds himself out of the desperate faith of 

them that have sought him, 
And his face shall be wrought of the wish to see his 

face. 

Man has lifted his voice unto the hollow sky and 
there was no answer but the echo of his voice, 
But out of many echoes there shall grow a word. 

There is a cry from the peaks of Caucasus, 
From the throat of Prometheus a hoarse shout of 
agony and courage and defiance ; 

Answer, O you stars I and make reply, you rushing 

worlds ! 
Have you not always chained your Titans where 

the vultures scream about the bloodied 

rocks 



THE AWAKENING 107 

Have you not thrust your beaks into the livers of 
them that loved you? 

There is a cry goes forth from all the stars, 
The voice of rebels and great lovers; 

Out of agonies and love shall God be made, 

He is wrought of cries that meet between the 

worlds, 
Of seeking cries that have come forth from the 

cruel spheres to find a God and be stilled. 

Answer, you populations. 

And make reply, you planets that are red in space: 
Do not ten thousand broken Christs this hour cry 
their despair? 

Are not Golgothas shaken this hour and the suns 

shamed? 
Goes there not forth a manifold wailing of them 

that cry; 
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 

These cries have wandered out along the waste 

places. 
And these despairs have met in the wilderness of 

chaos, 
And they have wrought a God; 

For he builds himself of the passion of martyrs, 
And he is woven of the ecstasy of great lovers. 
And he is wrought of the anguish of- them that have 
greatly needed him, 

Don Marquis 



io8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

THE KASIDAH 
( The Lay of the Higher Law) 

Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but 

self expect applause; 
He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and 

keeps his self-made laws. 

All other Life is living Death, a world where none 

but Phantoms dwell, 
A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the 

camel's-bell. 



And, glancing down the range of years, fear not thy 

future self to see; 
Resigned to life, to death resigned, as though the 

choice were naught to thee. 

Pluck the old woman from thy breast; Be stout in 

woe, be stark in weal; 
Do good for Good is good to do: Spurn bribe of 

Heav'n and threat of Hell. 

To seek the True, to glad the heart, such is of life 

the HIGHER LAW, 
Whose difference is the Man's degree, the Man of 

gold, the Man of straw. 

See not that something in Mankind that rouses 

hate or scorn or strife, 
Better the worm of Izrail than Death that walks in 

form of Life. 



THE KASIDAH 109 

Survey thy kind as One whose wants in the great 

Human Whole unite; 
The Homo rising high from earth to seek the 

Heav'ns of Life-in-Light; 

And hold Humanity one man, whose universal 

agony 
Still strains and strives to gain the goal, where 

agonies shall cease to be. 

Believe in all things; none believe; judge not nor 

warp by "Facts" the thought; 
See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem Maya and 

Mirage, Dream and Naught. 

Abjure the Why and seek the How: the God and 

gods enthroned on high 
Are silent all, are silent still; nor hear thy voice, nor 

deign reply. 

• • • 

Perchance the law some Giver hath : Let be I let be I 

what canst thou know? 
A myriad races came and went; this Sphinx hath 

seen them come and go. 

Haply the Law that rules the world allows to man 

the widest range; 
And haply Fate 's a Theist-word, subject to human 

chance and change. 

This " I " may find a future life, a nobler copy of our 

own, 
Where every riddle shall be ree'd, where every 

knowledge shall be known; 



no SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



Where 'twill be man's to see the whole of what on 

Earth he sees in part; 
Where change shall ne'er surcharge the thought; 

ttor hope defer'd shall hurt the heart. 

But! — faded flower and fallen leaf no more shall 

deck the parent tree ; 
And man once dropt by Tree of Life what hope of 

mother life has he? 

The shatter'd bowl shall know repair; the riven lute 

shall sound once more ; 
But who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen 

breath to man restore? 

The shiver'd clock again shall strike; the broken 

reed shall pipe again : 
But we, we die, and Death is one, the doom of 

brutes, the doom of men. 

Then, if Nirwana round our life with nothingness, 

'tis haply best; 

Thy toils and troubles, want and woe at length have 

won their guerdon — Rest. 
• • • 

Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy 

humble tale to tell : — 
The whispers of the Desert-wind; the Tinkling of 

the camel's-bell. 

Sir Richard Burton 



DISSOLUTION III 



DISSOLUTION 

If he may come for me; 

If, when the ebbing tide runs out to sea, 

He'll come from out the gloom, once more, and 

stand 
There, close beside me, holding out his hand; 
If I may see, ere blackness closes in, 
The reassurance of his boyish grin — 
I shall have grace to smile on those who weep, 
And close my eyes in sleep. 

If he will speak my name, 

It will not be as though Death's Angel came. 

Stern-eyed and winged with flame, to take me 

home — 
For there are purple hills we loved to roam; 
We knew calm streams with shoals where fishes 

spawn. 
And sunsets' fires and bugles of the dawn, 
And tranquil pools, inviting us to swim — 
So, I would welcome him. 

I would not that my eyes 

Should see him in the garb of Paradise, 

Serene and radiant, with the earthly clay 

By fires of tribulation burned away, 

A splendid spirit, bright and purified; 

Nor with the smile that came the day he died — 

That strange, high smile of cold austerity; 

I pray this may not be. 

I hope he may not speak 

Some august, sounding summons to the weak 



112 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

And frightened spirit. Let his battered creel 
Be slung and in his hand his rod and reel. 
So let me see him stand there, kind and fat, 
With grizzled hair and trout-flies in his hat, 
And, bending, grin and slap my back and say: 
"Come, son; they'll rise to-day!'* 

Frederic F. Van de Water 



"UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE" 

The Lord was teaching folk by the sea shore; 
His voice had quelled the storm, it raged no 

more; 
His word was like a balm, and did impart 
Joy to the righteous, hope to the broken heart. 
"Whoso shall love me perfectly," said He, 
"Shall look upon my Father and on Me." 
And people listened humbly to His Word. 

Now on the outer side of them that heard, 
A certain woman, leading by the hand 
Her child, had halted, passing on that way. 
And hearkening for a while the twain did stand. 
She had grown old with gleaning, and that day 
The load she carried was of straw, not wheat. 
And all her mother's heart heaved full of sighs; 
But lo, the boy was rosy-hued and sweet; 
A fair, small child he was, with smiling eyes 
That shamed the miserable rags he wore. 
The child said : " Mother, who speaks there on 

the shore?" 
" Child, 't is a prophet : holy laws they be 
He gives to men." 



"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP" 113 

"I wish that I could see 
The prophet, mother." And the child strove 

hard, 
Stood on tiptoe, and pressed to find a breach 
In the thick crowd; but many tall folk barred 
And hemmed him in, so that he could not 

reach 
To look upon the Master whose kind speech 
Wrought in his ear. Then, eager still, he cried: 
**I should behold him, mother dear, if thou 
Wouldst lift me in thine arms." 

But she replied, 
"Child, I am tired; I cannot lift thee now." 
Then a great sadness came upon the child 
And tears stood in the eyes that lately smiled. 

But Jesus, walking through the crowd, drew 

near 
E'en to the child and said, "Lo, — I am here." 

Arthur O'Shaughnessy 

"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP" 

The long day passes with its load of sorrow: 

In slumber deep 
I lay me down to rest until to-morrow — 

Thank God for sleep. 

Thank God for all respite from weary toiling, 

From cares that creep 
Across our lives like evil shadows, spoiling 

God's kindly sleep. 



114 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

We plough and sow, and, as the hours grow 
later. 

We strive to reap. 
And build our bams, and hope to build them 
greater 
Before we sleep. 

We toil and strain and strive with one another 

In hopes to heap 
Some greater share of profit than our brother 

Before we sleep. 

What will it profit that with tears or laughter 

Our watch we keep? 
Beyond it all there lies the Great Hereafter — 

Thank God for sleep ! 

For, at the last, beseeching Christ to save us, 

We turn with deep. 
Heart-felt thanksgiving unto God who gave us 

The Gift of Sleep. 

Major A. B. Paierson 

THE HILLS OF REST 

Beyond the last horizon's rim. 

Beyond adventure's farthest quest, 

Somewhere they rise, serene and dim, 
The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 

Upon their sunlit slopes uplift 

The castles we have built in Spain — 

While fair amid the summer drift 
Our faded gardens flower again. 



"BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL" 115 

Sweet hours we did not live go by 
To soothing note, on scented wing; 

In golden-lettered volumes lie 

The songs we tried in vain to sing. 

They all are there: the days of dream 
That build the inner lives of men; 

The silent, sacred years we deem 

The might be, and the might have been. 

Some evening when the sky is gold 

I'll follow day into the west; 
Nor pause, nor heed, till I behold 

The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 

Albert Bigelow Paine 

"BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL" 

Barest thou now, O soul. 

Walk out with me toward the unknown region, 
Where neither ground is foi the feet nor any path to 
follow? 

No map there, nor guide. 

Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, 
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are 
in that land. 

I know it not, O soul! 
Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, — 
All waits undreamed of in that region, that inacces- 
sible land. 



ii6 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Till when the tie is loosened, 
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, 
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds 
bounding us — 

Then we burst forth, we float. 
In Time and Space, O soul! prepared for them. 
Equal, equipped at last, — O joy! O fruit of all! — 
them to fulfill, O soul! 

Walt Whitman 

"WHEN THE TIME FOR PARTING 
COMES'* 

When the time for parting comes, and the day is on 

the wane. 
And the silent evening darkens over hill and over 

plain, 
And earth holds no more sorrow, no more grief, and 

no more pain. 
Shall we weary for the battle and the strife? 

When at last the trail is ending, and the stars are 
growing near. 

And we breathe the breath of conquest, and the 
voices that we hear 

Are the great companions' voices that have hal- 
lowed year on year. 
Shall we know an instant's grieving as we pass? 

Shall we pause a fleeting moment ere we grasp the 

eager hands. 
Take one last long look of wonder at the dimming of 

the lands, 



EPITAPH 117 

Love the earth one glowing moment ere we pass 
from its demands, 
Cull all beauty in its essence as we gaze? 

Or with not one backward longing shall we leap the 

last abyss, 
Scale the highest crags glad-hearted, fearful only 

lest the bliss 
Of an earth-remembering instant should delay the 
great sun's kiss — 
Consuming us within the splendor of the flame? 
Dorothea Lawrance Mann 



EPITAPH 

That my great friend should lie 

Blind to the morning sky. 

The bold, persistent glory of the sun; 

That men should say, 

"Brave was his day, 

Yet now his day is done,*' 

Is the true grief I bear . . . 

Not for my selfish share 

In his keen mind, high heart, courageous 

Ufe; 
Sorrow he may not be 
With earth's bright revelry, 
In love, in strife. 

Yet, while abiding here, 

He left with me good cheer, 

Calmly he met the darkness and the end; 



ii8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

So on his tomb I lay 
The wealth of yesterday, 
That none may spend. 

Henry Herbert Knihbs 

HIS OWNE EPITAPH 

Eternal rest on him bestowe, 
O Lord, and everlastynge light, 
Who lacked withal for sup or bite, 

Shorn close on scalp and chin and browe. 

Who was scrap't bare and smooth, I trowe 
As any turnip round, poor wighte: 

Eternal rest on him bestowe. 

Hard doome befell him here belowe. 
Drove forth and smote him in sore spite. 
Though "I appeal!" he cried with mighte, 

A form of speech that *s playne enowe; 

Eternal rest on him bestowe. 

Frangois Villon 
Translated by Wilfrid Thorley 

THE FLIGHT 

Upon a cloud among the stars we stood : 
The angel raised his hand, and looked, and said, 
" Which world, of all yon starry myriad 
Shall we make wing to?" The still soUtude 
Became a harp whereon his voice and mood 
Made spheral music round his haloed head. 
I spake — for then I had not long been dead — 
"Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood 
A moment on these orbs ere I decide. . . . 



A QUESTION 119 



What is yon lower star that beauteous shines 
And with soft splendor now incarnadines 
Our wings? — There would I go and there abide." 
Then he, as one who some child's thought divines: 
"That is the world where yesternight you died." 

Lloyd Mifflin 

A QUESTION 

See proud monuments of every shape and size, 
Or deep in earth, or soaring to the skies, 
Scattered profusely over Earth's broad crust, 
Fair, hollow caskets holding naught but Dust. 

'T is strange how hard Men strive 

To keep alive, 

Tn every age and under every clime, 

The memory of the Dead; 

Or from the gnawing tooth of Time, 

Save the frail body, whence that Life has fled. 

Is it Men feel that Death is something real? 
Something that will endure, — and are they sure 
That after Death's sharp pain they rest, — 
Nor dream another Life's tumultuous Dream 
again? 

If Man, instead of dying, at once flies 

To happier worlds and fairer skies, 

Why, then, proud monuments of every shape and 

size? 
Why mournful sables and sad weeping eyes? 

Elihu Vedder 



120 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

THE SCEPTICS 
It was the little leaves beside the road: 

Said Grass, "What is that sound 

So dismally profound, 

That detonates and desolates the air?" 

"That is St. Peter's bell," 

Said rain- wise Pimpernel; 

"He is music to the godly, 

Though to us he sounds so oddly, 

And he terrifies the faithful unto prayer." 

Then something very like a groan 
Escaped the naughty little leaves. 

Said Grass, "And whither track 

These creatures all in black. 

So woebegone and penitent and meek?" 

"They're mortals bound for church," 

Said the little Silver Birch; 

"They hope to get to heaven 

And have their sins forgiven. 

If they talk to God about it once a week." 

And something very like a smile 
Ran through the naughty little leaves. 

Said Grass, "What is that noise 

That startles and destroys 

Our blessed summer — brooding when 

we're tired?" 
"That's folk a-praising God," 
Said the tough old cynic Clod; 



lO VICTIS" 121 



"They do it every Sunday, 

They'll be all right on Monday; 

It's just a little habit they've acquired." 

And laughter spread among the little leaves. 

Bliss Carman 

"10 VICTIS" 

I sing the hj'mn of the conquered, who fell in the 

Battle of Life, — 
The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died 

overwhelmed in the strife; 
Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the 

resounding acclaim 
Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore 

the chaplet of fame, — 
But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, 

the broken in heart. 
Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent 

and desperate part; 
Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose 

hopes burned in ashes away, 
From whose hands slipped the prize they had 

grasped at, who stood at the dying of day 
With the wreck of their life all around them, un- 

pitied, unheeded, alone. 
With Death sweeping down o'er their failure, and 

all but their faith overthrown. 

While the voice of the world shouts its chorus. — 
its paean for those who have won; 

While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and 
hijrh to the breeze and the sun 



122 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Glad banners are waving, hands clapping, and 
hurrying feet 

Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, I stand 
on the field of defeat — 

In the shadow, with those who have fallen, and 
wounded, and dying, and there 

Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain- 
knotted brows, breathe a prayer. 

Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 
"They only the victory win. 

Who have fought the good fight, and have van- 
quished the demon that tempts us within; 

Who have held to their faith unseduced by the 
prize that the world holds on high; 

Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, 
fight, — if need be, to die." 

Speak, History! Who are Life's victors? Unroll 
thy long annals, and say. 

Are they those whom the world called the victors — 
who won the success of a day? 

The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell at 
Thermopylae's tryst. 

Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socra- 
tes? Pilate or Christ? 

William Wetmore Story 



VILLON'S REGRETS 

Francois Villon, being about to die, a worthy friar would 
fain have shriven him, and did earnestly exhort him to 
confess those acts of his life which he did regret. Villon 
bade him return again when he might have had time to 



VILLON»S REGRETS 123 

bethink him of his sins. Upon the good father's return, 
Villon was dead; but by his side were the following verses, 
his last, wherein he set forth those things which he did 
regret. 

I, FRANpOIS VILLON, ta'en at last 
To the rude bed where all must lie, 
Fain would forget the turbid past 
And lay me down in peace and die. 
Would I be shrived? Ah — can I tell? 
My sins but trifles seem to be. 
Nor worth the dignity of Hell; 
If not, then ill avails it me 
To count them one and all — and yet — 
There be some things which I regret! 

The sack of abbeys, many a brawl, 
A score of knife-thrusts in the dark, 
Forced oft by Fate against the wall, 
And years in prison, cold and stark — 
These crimes and pains seem far away 
Now that I come at length to die; 
'T is idle for the Past to pray, 
'Tis hopeless for the Past to sigh; 
These are a troubled dream — and yet 
For them I have but scant regret I 

The toil my mother had to know 
What years I lay in gyves for debt; 
A pretty song heard years ago. 
When, I know not; where, I forget; 
The crust I once kept for my own 
(Though all too scant for my poor use) ; 



124 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

The friend I left to die alone, 

(Perdie! The watchmen pressed us close!) 

Trifles against my crimes to set I 

Yet these are all which I regret. 

Captains and cutthroats not a few, 
And maidens fair of many a clime 
Have named me friend in the wild past 
Whenas we wallowed in the slime; 
Gamblers and rogues and clever thieves, 
And unfrocked priests, a sorry crew — 
(How stubbornly the memory cleaves 
To all who have befriended you!) 
I drain a cup to them, and yet — 
Not these the friends whom I regret ! 

My foundered horse, who died for me 
(Nor whip nor spur were his, I ween !) 
That day the hangman looked to see 
Poor Villon earth and sky between I 
A mongrel cur who shared my lot 
Three bitter winters on the Isle: 
He held the rabble off, God wot ! 
One time I cheated in the deal. 
*T was but an instant, but I fled 
Down a vile alley known to me — 
There in the garbage he lay dead ; 
The gamblers raged — but I was free ! 
Humble, poor brutes at best; and yet — 
They are the friends whom I regret 1 

And once the lilies were a-blow 
Through all the sunny fields of France; 



VILLON»S REGRETS 125 

I marked one whiter than the snow, 
And would have gathered it, perchance, 
Had not some trifle I forget, 
A Bishop's loot, a cask of wine 
Purloined from some auberge — a bet — 
Distracted this wild head of mine; 
A childish fancy this, and yet — 
It is this thing which I regret. 

Again, I rode through Picardy 
What time the vine was in the bud; 
A little maiden smiled on me, 
I might have kissed her, an* I would ! 
I We known a thousand maidens since, 
And many have been kind to me — 
I've never seen one quite so fair 
As she, that day in Picardy; 
Ashes of roses these, and yet — 
They are the things which I regret. 

One perfect lily grew for me, 

And blossomed on another's breast; 

Others have clasped the little hands 

Whose rosy palms I might have pressed : 

So as I die, my wasted youth 

Mocks my dim eyes and fading breath — • 

Still, I have lived ! And having lived 

That much is mine — I mock at Death. 

I should confess, you say. But yet — 

Only for Life have I regret I 

L'ENVOI 
O bubbles of the vanished wine 
To which my lips were never seil 



126 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

O lips that dimpled close to mine, 
Whose ruddy warmth I never met! 
Father, poor trifles these, and yet — 
They are the things which I regret I 

John D, Swain 

A DEAD MARCH 

Play me a march, low-toned and slow — a march 

for a silent tread, 
Fit for the wandering feet of one who dreams of the 

silent dead, 
Lonely, between the bones below and the souls that 

are overhead. 

Here for a while they smiled and sang, alive in the 

interspace, 
Here with the grass beneath the foot, and the stars 

above the face. 
Now are their feet beneath the grass, and whither 

has flown their grace? 

Who shall assure us whence they come, or tell us 

the way they go? 
Verily, life with them was joy and, now they have 

left us, woe. 
Once they were not, and now they are not, and this 

is the simi we know. 

Orderly range the seasons due, and orderly roll the 

stars. 
How shall we deem the soldier brave who frets of 

his wounds and scars? 
Are we as senseless brutes that we should dash at 

the well-seen bars? 



A DEAD MARCH 127 

No, we are here, with feet unfixed, but ever as if 

with lead. 
Drawn from the orbs which shine above to the orb 

on which we tread, 
Down to the dust from which we came and with 

which we shall mingle dead. 

No, we are here to wait, and work, and strain our 

banished eyes, 
Weary and sick of soil and toil, and hungry and 

fain for skies. 
Far from the reach of wingless men, and not to be 

scaled with cries. 

No, we are here to bend our necks to the yoke of 

tyrant Time, 
Welcoming all the gifts he gives us — glories of 

youth and prime. 
Patiently watching them all depart as our heads 

grow white as rime. 

Why do we mourn the days that go — for the same 

sun shines each day. 
Ever a Spring her primrose hath, and ever a May 

her may; 
Sweet as the rose that died last year is the rose that 

is born to-day. 

Do we not, too, return, we men, as ever the roimd 

earth whirls? 
Never a head is dimmed with gray but another is 

sunned with curls ; 
She was a girl and he was a boy, but yet there are 

boys and girls. 



128 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Ah, but alas ! for the smile of smiles that never but 

one face wore; 
Ah, for the voice that has flown away like a bird to 

an unseen shore; 
Ah, for the face — the flower of flowers — that 

blossoms on earth no more. 

Cosmo Monkhouse 

THE PIPES O' GORDON'S MEN 

Home comes a lad with the bonny hair, 

And the kilted plaid that the hill-clans wear; 

And you hear the mother say : 

"Whear ha* ye ben, wee Laddie; whear ha' ye ben 

th' day?" 
"O! I ha' ben wi' Gordon's men; 
Dinna ye hear th' bagpipes play? 
And I followed th' soldiers across th' green, 
And doon th' road tae Aberdeen. 
And when I 'm a mon, my Mither, 
And th' Hielanders parade, 
I'll be marchin' there, wi' my fejrther's pipes, 
And I '11 wear th' red cockade." 

Beneath the Soudan's sky ye ken the smoke, 
As the clans reply when the tribesmen spoke. 
Then the charge roars by! 
The death-sweat cUngs to the kilted form that the 

stretcher brings, 
And the iron-nerved surgeons say : 
"Whear ha' ye ben, my Laddie; whear ha' ye ben 

th' day?" 
"O, I ha' ben wi* Gordon's men; 



AT THE TOP OF THE ROAD 129 

Dinna ye hear th* bagpipes play? 
An' I piped th* clans from the river barge 
Across the sands, an* through the charge. 
An* I — skirled — th' pibroch — keen — an* high, 
But th* pipes — ben broke — an* — my — lips — 
ben — dry.** 

CORONACH 
Upon the hill-side, high and steep, 
Where rank on rank the soldiers sleep, — ' 
Where the silent cannons beside the path. 
Point the last forced-march that the soldier 

hath, — 
Where the falling grave-grass has partly hid 
The round-shot, heaped in a pyramid — 
A white stone rises ; across its face 
You can read the words that the chisels trace : 
"Whear ha* ye ben, wee Laddie; whear ha* ye 

ben th* day?** 
"O, I ha* ben wi* Gordon's men; 
Dinna ye hear th* bagpipes play?** 

y. Scott Glasgow 

AT THE TOP OF THE ROAD 

"But, Lord,** she said, "my shoulders still are 

strong — 
I have been used to bear the load so long; 

"And see, the hill is passed, and smooth the 

road . . .*» 
f'Yet/' said the Stranger, "yield me now thy 

load,'* 



130 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Gently he took it from^her, and she stood 
Straight-lknbed and lithe, in new-found maiden- 
hood, 

Amid long, sunlit fields ; around them sprang 
A tender breeze, and birds and rivers sang. 

"My Lord,** she said, "the land is very fair!** 
Smiling, he answered: ^*Was it not so there?" 

"There?** In her voice a wondering question lay: 
"Was I not always here, then, as to-day?** 

He turned to her with strange, deep eyes aflame: 
" Knowest thou not this kingdom, nor my name?" 

"Nay,** she replied: "but this I understand — 
That thou art Lord of Life in this dear land I** 

" Yea, child," he murmured, scarce above his 

breath: 
**Lord of the Land! but men have named me 

Death.". 

Charles Buxton Going 



AFTERWARDS 

I know that these poor rags of womanhood, — 
This oaten pipe, whereon the wild winds played 
Making sad music, — tattered and outfrayed. 
Cast off, played out, — can hold no more of 

good. 
Of love, or song, or sense of sun and shade. 



WHEN SHE CAME TO GLORY 131 

What homely neighbors elbow me (hard by 
'Neath the black yews) I know I shall not know, 
Nor take account of changing winds that blow, 
Shifting the golden arrow, set on high 
On the gray spire, nor mark who come and go. 

Yet would I lie in some familiar place. 

Nor share my rest with uncongenial dead, — 

Somewhere, maybe, where friendly feet will 

tread, — 
As if from oiit some little chink of space 
Mine eyes might see them tripping overhead. 

And though too sweet to deck a sepulcher 
Seem twinkling daisy-buds and meadow-grass; 
And so would more than serve me, lest they pass 
Who fain would know what woman rested there, 
What her demeanor, or her story was, — 

For these I would that on a sculptured stone 
(Fenced 'round with iron work to keep secure) 
Should sleep a form with folded palms demure. 
In aspect like the dreamer that was gone. 
With these words carved: "/ hoped, but was 
not sure" 

Violet Fane 



WHEN SHE CAME TO GLORY 

Nay, loose my hand and let me go ! 
God's glories pierce and frighten. 
I want my house, my fires, my bread, 
My sheets to wash and whiten. 



132 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I liked the dusty roads of earth, 
The brambles and the roaming; 
I liked the flowers that used to fade, 
The small lamp in the gloaming. 

The fields of God, they blind my eyes. 
Dread is this heavenly tillage. 
I want the sweet, lost homeliness 
Of the door-yards of our village. 

Where are the accustomed, common 

things — 
The cups we drank together; 
The old shoes that he laced for me, 
The cape for rainy weather? 

Dear were our stimibling, hum&D. ways, 
His words* impetuous flurry, 
His tossed hair, the kind, anxious brow, 
His steps' too-eager hurry. 

O tall archangel with such wings, 
Your beauty is too burning ! 
Give me once more my threadbare dress 
And the soimd of his feet returning. 

Florence Wilkinson Evans 



HERACLITUS 

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were 

dead, 
They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter 

tears to shed. 



"TIS ALL AND NOTHING" 133 

I wept as I rememberM how often you and I 
Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down 
the sky. 

And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian 

guest, 
A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, 
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, 

awake ; 
For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot 

take. 

William Johnson Cory 



"'TIS ALL AND NOTHING" 

Writ on a ruined palace in Kashmir : 
"The end is nothing, and the end is near." 

Where are the voices kings were glad to hear ? 
Where now the feast, the song, the bayadere? 
The end is nothing, and the end is near. 

And yonder lovely rose; alas! my dear! 
See the November garden, rank and drear. 
The end is nothing, and the end is near. 

See! how the rain-drop mingles with the mere, 
Mark! how the age devours each passing year. 
The end is nothing, and the end is near. 

Forms rise and grow and wane and disappear. 
The life allotted thee is now and here: — 
The end is nothing, and the end is near. 



134 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Then vex thyself no more with thought austere 
Take what thou canst while thou abidest here. ^ 
Seek finer pleasures each returning year : — 
The end is nothing, and the end is near. 

• • • 

Joy is the Lord, and Love His charioteer; 
Be tranquil and rejoicing; oh, my dear! 
Shun the wild seas, far from the breakers steer; 
The end is Vision, and the end is near. 

Ah! banish hope and doubt, regret and fear. 
Check the gay laugh, but dry the idle tear. 
Search! Is the light within thee burning clear? 
The end is Vision and the end is near. 

List to the wisdom learned of saint and seer! 
The living Lord is joy, and peace His sphere; 
Rebel no more! throw down thy shield and spear. 
Surrender all thyself; true life is here ; 
The end is Vision, and the end is near. 

Forget not this, forget not that, my dear! 
'T is all and nothing, and the^end is near. 

Anonymous 

"HINC NOSTRflS LACRIM^" 

'T was ever so — 

The young, the beautiful, the brave — 

Are first to go ! 

T^e halt and blind 

In all the days and ages gone 

Kemain behind 1 



BREAKING THE SILENCE 135 

They venture far 

Who gird at fate and death to gain 

The blazing star I 

Yet shall they glow- 
In constellations vast, above 
The earthly show I 

So rest our tears 

To nouriEh memories green 

l^hrough waiting years, 

While in the sky 

Shine they forever in^the golden light 

Who dared to die \ 

Don C, Seitz 



BREAKING THE SILENCE 

If I should fall asleep one day, 

All overworn, 
And should my spirit from the clay 
Go dreaming out the Heavenward way, 

Or thence be softly borne, — 

I pray you, angels, do not first 

Assail mine ear 
With that blest anthem oft rehearsed, — 
"Behold the bonds of Death are burst," - 

Lest I should faint with fear. 

But let some happy bird at hand 
The silence break: 



136 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

So shall I dimly understand 
That dawn has touched a blossoming land, 
And sigh myself awake. 

From that deep rest emerging so 

To lift the head 
And see the bath-flower's bell of snow, ♦ 
The pink Arbutus, and the low 

Spring-beauty streaked with red, 

Will all suffice — no other where . 

Impelled to roam, — 
Till some blithe wanderer, passing fair, 
Will smiling pause, of me aware, 

And murmur, "Welcome home I" 

So, sweetly greeted, I shall rise 

To kiss her cheek; 
Then lightly soar in lovely guise, 
As one familiar with the skies. 

Who finds, and need not seek. 

Amandfi T, Jones 

AT SUNSET 

To all who went adventuring at the last. 
And to new voyages at sunset passed. 
Too brave at heart, too high of hope to see 
Their sky horizoned by mortality : 
Ossian who left the ease that age had earned 
That he might win to where the Fenians burned ; 
And him who found new hopes invincible 
Because the sea had something yet to tell; 



THE DEPARTED FRIEND 137 

And many another one who, scorning death, 
Went forth enkindling with his latest breath 
To glory and a never-dying flame, 
The funeral pyre that lights a hero name : — 
These lines I consecrate that they may aid 
Me when I go upon that last crusade, 
For though the West be grey and no light linger 
Where beckoned once the sunset's flickering fin- 
ger, 
No business of the earth will hold me back 
From seeking out where they have found a track. 
I will launch forth elate, and leave again 
These little harbours and the ways of men, 
And light again all that old Western fire 
With the red sunset of my last desire. 

Seumas O'Sullivan 

THE DEPARTED FRIEND 

He is not dead, this friend, not dead. 
But in the path we mortals tread. 
Got some few trifling steps ahead 

And nearer to the end, — 
So that you, too, once past the bend 
Shall meet again, as, face to face, this friend 

You fancy dead. 

Push gaily on, strong heart, the while 
You travel forward, mile by mile. 
He loiters with a backward smile 

Till you can overtake, — 
And strains his eyes to search his wake. 
Or, whistling as he sees you through the break, 

Waits on a stile. 



138 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Though he that ever Mnd and true 

Kept stoutly step by step with you 

Your whole, long, gusty life-time through 

Be gone awhile before, 
But now a moment gone before, — 
Yet doubt not soon the seasons shall restore 

Your friend to you. 

He has but turned a corner; still 
He pushes on with right good will. 
Through mire and marsh, through heugh and 
hill. 
That selfsame, arduous way, 
That selfsame, upland, helpful way. 
That you and he through many a doubtful day 
Attempted still. 

Robert Louis Stevenson 

UP-HILL 

Does the road wind up-hill all the way? 

YeSf to the very end. 
Will the day's journey take the whole long day? 

From morn to night, my friend. 

But is there for the night a resting-place? 

A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin. 
May not the darkness hide it from my face? 

You cannot miss that inn. 

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? 

Those who have gone before. 
Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? 

They will not keep you waiting at that door. 



WITH THE TIDE 139 

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 

Of labor you shall find the sum. 
Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 

Yea, beds for all who come. 

Christina Georgina Rossetti 

WITH THE TIDE 

(Written on the day after Theodore Roosevelt's death) 

Somewhere I read, in an old book whose name 
Is gone from me, I read that when the days 
Of a man are counted, and his business done, 
There comes up the shore at evening, with the tide, 
To the place where he sits, a boat — 
And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he 

sees. 
Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar, 
The faces of his friends long dead; and knows 
They come for him, brought in upon the tide, 
To take him where men go at set of day. 
Then rising, with his hands in theirs, he goes 
Between them his last steps, that are the first 
Of the new life — and with the ebb they pass. 
Their shaken sail grown small upon the moon. 

Often I thought of this, and pictured me 

How many a man who lives with throngs about 

him, 
Yet straining through the twilight for that boat, 
Shall scarce make out one figure in the stern. 
And that so faint, its features shall perplex him 
With doubtful memories, and his heart hang back. 



140 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

But others, rising as they see the sail 
Increase upon the sunset, hasten down, 
Hands out and eyes elated; for they see, 
Head over head, crowding from bow to stern. 
Re-peopling their long loneliness with smiles. 
The faces of their friends ; and such go forth 
Content upon the ebb tide, with safe hearts. 

But never 

To worker summoned when his day was done 

"Did mounting tide bring in such freight of friends 

As stole to you up the white wintry shingle. 

That night while they that watched you thought you 

slept. 
Softly they came, and beached the boat, and gath- 
ered 
In the still cove under the icy stars. 
Your last-born, and the dear loves of your heart. 
And all men that have loved right more than ease, 
And honour above honours ; all who gave 
Free-handed of their best for other men, 
And thought their giving taking, they who knew 
Man's natural state is effort, up and up — 
All these were there, so great a company 
Perchance you marvelled, wondering what great 

ship 
Had brought that throng unnumbered to the cove 
Where the boys used to beach their light canoe 
After old happy picnics — 

But these, your friends and children, to whose 

hands 
Committed, in the silent night you rose 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 141 

And took your last faint steps — 
These led you down, O great American, 
Down to the winter night and the white beach. 
And there you saw that the huge hull that 

waited 
Was not as are the boats of the other dead, 
Frail craft for a brief passage ; no, for this 
Was first of a long line of towering transports. 
Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one, 
The ships you launched, the ships you manned, 

the ships 
That now, returning from their sacred quest 
With the thrice-sacred burden of their dead. 
Lay waiting there to take you forth with them, 
Out with the ebb tide, on some farther quest. 

Edith Wharton 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

God, the Master Pilot — 

Or Gods, if such there be — 
Pour me no weakling's measure 

When ye pour the wine for me>^ 
Of pain, of love, of pleasure — 

I'll drain the draught ye give; 
Of good and ill, give me the fill 

Of the life ye bade me live. 

Spare me no tithe of favor, 
With fortune pave my path, 

Nor hold the hand of vengeance 
When I deserve your wrath. 



142 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Whatever fates ye send me, 

Whatever cast the sky, 
Grant me the grace to live a man, 

And as a man to die. 

Upon the good I render 

Let shine your proudest sun, 
And rest me in the valleys 

When my last trick is done. 
For these, your utmost portions, 

1*11 pay the utmost toll. 
So this, my life, becomes the great 

Adventure of my Soul. 

Major Kendall Banning 

WHEN I HA^/E GONE WEIRD WAYS 

When I have finished with this episode, 

Left the hard, up-hill road. 

And gone weird ways to seek another load — 

O, friends, regret me not, nor weep for me, 

Child of Infinity. 

Nor dig a grave, nor rear for me a tomb 
To say with lying writ: "Here in the gloom, 
He who loved bigness takes a narrow room. 

Content to pillow here his weary head, 

For he is dead." 

But give my body to the funeral pyre, 

And bid the laughing fire. 

Eager and strong and swift, like my desire. 

Scatter my subtle essence into space — 

Free me of time and place. 



ROOM FOR A SOLDIER! 143 

And sweep the bitter ashes from the hearth, 
Fling back the dust I borrowed from the earth 
Into the chemic broil of death and birth : 

The vast alembic of the cryptic scheme, 

V/arm with the master-dream. 

And thus, — O little house that sheltered me, 
Dissolve again in wind and rain, to be 
Part of the cosmic weird economy. 
And O ! how oft with new life shalt thou lift 
Out of the atom-drift! 

John G. Neihardt 



ROOM FOR A SOLDIER! 

Room for a soldier ! Lay him in the clover. 
He loved the fields and they shall be his cover: 
Make his mound with hers who called him once 
her lover: 
Where the rain may rain upon it, 
Where the sun may shine upon it, 
Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
And the bee will dine upon it. 

Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches; 
Take him to the fragrant fields, by the silver 

birches, 
Where the whippoorwill shall mourn, where the 
oriole perches: 
Make his mound with sunshine on it. 
Where the bee will dine upon it. 
Where the lamb hath lain upon it. 
And the rain will rain upon it. 



144 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Busy as the busy bee, his rest should be the clover; 
Gentle as a lamb was he, and the fern should be his 

cover ; 
Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow 
over; 
Where the rain may rain upon it, 
Where the sun may shine upon it, 
Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
And the bee will dine upon it. 

Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full 

often 
Out of those tender eyes which ever more did 

soften : 
He never could look cold till we saw him in his cof- 
fin. 
Make his mound with sunshiiss on it, 
Where the wind may sigh upon it, 
Where the moon may stream upon it. 
And Memory shall dream upon it. 

"Captain" or "Colonel" — whatever invocation 
Suit our hymn the best, no matter for thy station, — 
On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a 
mighty nation ! 
Long as the sim doth shine upon it. 
Shall glow the goodly pine upon it; 
Long as the stars do gleam upon it 
Shall Memory come to dream upon it. 

Thomas William Parsons 



THE END OF ALL 145 

THE END OF ALL 

Blest are the dormant^ 

In death : they repose 

From bondage and torment, 

From passions and woes. 

From the yoke of the world and the snares of 

the traitor. 
The grave, the grave is the true liberator. 

Griefs chase one another 

Around the earth*s dome: 

In the arms of the mother 

Alone is our home. 

Woo pleasures, ye triflersi The thoughtful are 

wiser; 
The grave, the grave is their one tranquillizer. 

Is the good man unfriended 

On life's ocean-path? 

Where storms have expended 

Their turbulent wrath? 

Are his labors requited by slander and rancor? 

The grave, the grave is his sure bower-anchor. 

To gaze on the faces 

Of lost ones anew, 

To lock in embraces 

The loved and the true. 

Were a rapture to make even Paradise brighter. 

The grave, the grave is the great reuniter. 

Crown the corpse then with laurels, 
The conqueror's wreath, 



146 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Make joyous with carols 

The chamber of death, 

And welcome the victor with cymbal and psalter : 

The grave, the grave is the only exalter. 

James Clarence Mangan 

THE DANCE OF DEATH 

He is the despots' Despot. All must bide, 
Later or soon, the message of his might; 
Princes and potentates their heads must hide. 
Touched by the awful sigil of his right; 
Beside the Kaiser he at eve doth wait 
And pours a potion in his cup of state; 
The stately Queen his bidding must obey; 
No keen-eyed Cardinal shall him affray; 
And to the Dame that wantoneth he saith — 
"Let be, Sweet-heart, to junket and to play.** 
There is no King more terrible than Death. 

The lusty Lord, rejoicing in his pride, 
He draweth down; before the armed Knight 
With jingling bridle-rein he still doth ride; 
He crosseth the strong Captain in the fight; 
The Burgher, grave, he beckons from debate; 
He hales the Abbot by his shaven pate, 
Nor for the Abbess* wailing will delay; 
No bawling Mendicant shall say him nay; 
E'en to the pyx the Priest he followeth. 
Nor can the Leech his chilling finger stay . . . 
There is no King more terrible than Death. 

All things must bow to him. And woe betide 
The Wine-bibber, — the Roisterer by night; 



THE DANCE OF DEATH 147 

Him the feast-master, many bouts defied, 
Him *twixt the pledging and the cup shall smite; 
Woe to the Lender at usurious rate. 
The hard Rich Man, the hireling Advocate ; 
Woe to the Judge that selleth Law for pay; 
Woe to the Thief that like a beast of prey 
With creeping tread the traveller harryeth: — 
These, in their sin, the sudden sword shall slay . , • 
There is no King more terrible than Death, 

He hath no pity,. — nor will be denied. 

When the low hearth is garnished and bright, 

Grimly he flingeth the dim portal wide, 

And steals the Infant in the Mother's sight; 

He hath no pity for the scorned of fate: — 

He spares not Lazarus lying at the gate. 

Nay, nor the Blind that stumbleth as he may; 

Nay, the tired Plouglmian, — at the sinking ray, — 

In the last furrow, — feels an icy breath. 

And knows a hand hath turned the team astray . • • 

There is no King more terrible than Death. 

He hath no pity. For the new-made Bride, 
Blithe with the promise of her life's delight, 
That wanders gladly by her Husband's side, 
He with the clatter of his drum doth fright; 
He scares the Virgin at the convent grate ; 
The Maid half -won, the Lover passionate; 
He hath no grace for weakness and decay: 
The tender Wife, the Widow bent and gray, 
The feeble Sire whose footstep faltereth, ■— 
All these he leadeth by the lonely way . . . 
There is no King more terrible than Death. 



148 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

ENVOY 
Youth, for whose ear and monishing of late, 
I sang of Prodigals and lost estate, 
Have thou thy joy of living and be gay; 
But know not less that there must come a 

day — 
Aye, and perchance e*en now it hasteneth, — 
When thine own heart shall speak to thee 

and say, — 
There is no King more terrible than Death. 

Austin Dobson 

MAN»S GUESS 

Far beyond Man's utmost sight 

His daring mind pursues its flight. 

Yet ever ends where it began — in Night. 

The clear eyes of the wisest Sage, 
The firm faith of the greatest Saint; 
One comes to where his Eyes grow dim, 
The other where his Faith grows faint. 

Scheme after scheme he vainly tries, 
Star after star he sees arise. 
And far beyond them in his fancy flies. 
Ever returning with this vague surmise 
To which he clings even in darkest night, 
*T is but a guess, — 

"All things may turn out right." 
Elihu Vedder 



THE PAINTING 149 



MY OLD COUNSELOR 

The Sun looked from his everlasting skies, 
He laughed into my daily-dying eyes ; 
He said to me, the brutal shining Sun : 
"Poor, fretful, hot, rebellious little one! 

"Thou shalt not find it, yet there shall be truth; 
Thou shalt grow old, but yet there shall be youth; 
Thou shalt not do, yet great deeds shall be done, — 
Believe me, child, I am an old, old Sun! 

"Thou mayst go blind, yet fair will bloom the 

spring; 
Thou mayst not hear them, but the birds will sing; 
Thou mayst despair, no less will hope be rife; 
Thou must lie dead, but many will have life. 

"Thou mayst declare of love: it is a dream! 
Yet long with love, my love, the Earth will teem : 
Let not thy foolish heart be borne so low, — 
Lift up thy heart! Exult that it is so!'' 

Gertrude Hall 



THE PAINTING 

There is a painting on my wall, 

A blue daub of the sea. 

With a black rock lifting tall 

And a gray haze over all, 

And the wind in a bended tree. 

It is a window where my soul goes free ! 



150 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Dusk after dusk I come into that room 

From the won fields of life, 

From the weary hxmian strife, 

And see my painting like a pleasant bloom, 

Against the white wall there, 

And know God meant His kingdoms to be fair. 

The towers and the streets grow blurred and dim, 

I see the world once more 

As it occurred to Him, 

The clean sea and the clasping shore, 

And the wind's hand shaking music from a tree I 

That is the living universe to me; 

The rest becomes a painted masque of days 

Wherein I build at golden make-believe, 

For purses and for praise, 

And put a solemn face upon it all 

My childish fellow builders to deceive. 

But here upon my study-wall 

Hangs the blue gate to wide reality. 

The strong rock, and the singing tree. 

And the shore asleep in the water's arm. 

Like a woman taken for her charm. 

Clasped by that lover of all lands, the sea ! 

Impoverished is the Man who owns one world, 

And one alone, whose soul has never trod 

The bold beginnings of the path to God, 

Who goes with ne'er a flaming dream unfurled 

Along the crawling highways of his kind, 

Clinging to vapors and to husks 

With futile hands, half lost and wholly blind, 

Fearful of shadows, yet without the mind 

To see what stars may fleck his journey's dusks. 



PASSAGE TO INDIA 151 

To him be pity! For his soul shall grope 
In vain for Beauty and for Hope. 

Oh, that a window such as mine 

Might swing in every wall I 

With the black rock lifting tall 

And the wind like sweet, untasted wine, 

And the blown tree, 

And the shore and the seat 

Dana Burnet 

PASSAGE TO INDIA 

Singing my days ! 

Singing the great achievements of the present, 

The past — the infinite greatness of the past 1 

Passage to India! 

Lo, soul, seest thou not God*s purpose from the first? 
The earth to be spann'd, connected by network. 
The races, neighboiu-s, to marry and be given in 

marriage. 
The oceans to be crossed, the distant brought near, 
The lands to be welded together. 

A worship new I sing. 

You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours. 

You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, 

You, not for trade or transportation only. 

But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul. 

Ah more than any priest, O soul, we too believe in 

God, 
But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. 



152 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

soul thou pleasest me, I thee, 

Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the 

night, 
Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and 

Death, like waters flowing. 
Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite, 
Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me 

all over. 
Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee, 

1 and my soul to range in range of thee. 

Thou transcendent I 
Nameless, the fibre and the breath, 

Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou 

centre of them. 
Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the 

loving. 

Thou moral, spiritual fountain — affection's source 
— thou reservoir ! 

(O pensive soul of me — O thirst unsatisfied — 
waitest not there — 

Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Com- 
rade perfect?) 

Thou pulse — thou motive of the stars, suns, sys- 
tems, 

That circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, 

Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space ! 

How should I think, how breathe a single breath, 
how speak, if, out of myself, 

1 could not launch, to those, su'perior universes? 

Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 



PASSAGE TO INDIA 153 

At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and 

Death, 
But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual 

Me — 
And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, 
Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space. 

Passage ! Immediate passage 1 The blood burns in 

my veins ! 
Away O soul! Hoist instantly the anchor! 
Cut the hawsers — haul out — shake out every sail ! 
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground 

long enough? 
Have we not grovePd here long enough, eating and 

drinking like mere brutes? 
Have we not darkened and dazed ourselves with 

books long enough? 

Sail forth — steer for the deep waters only ! 
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou 

with me. 
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared 

to go. 
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 

O my brave soul ! 

O farther farther sail ! 

O daring joy, but safe ! are they not all the seas of 

God? 
O farther, farther, farther sail ! 

Walt Whitman 



154 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

RELIGION 

Creeds change, 

All outward forms 

Recast themselves. 

Sacred groves, temples and churches 

Rise and rot and fall. 

Races and nations 

And the various tongues of men 

Come and go and are 

Recorded, numbered 

And forgotten in the repetition 

And the drift 

Of many ages. 

All outward circumstances 

May be different 

But there lives no man — • 

Nor ever lived one — 

Who, in the silence of his heart, 

Feeling his need, 

Has not cried out, 

Shaping some prayer 

To the unchanging God. 

Paul Kester 



PRAYER AMID FLAMES 

Holy Spirit, I cry to thee. 
Fire and Victor-Song is thy name. 
Shine in our need, oh spirit of power. 
Shine o'er the gulf of our dread last hour, 
Burn into ashes our mortal frame ! — 



"GATHER US IN" 155 

Even in death mine arms shall be 
Outstretched in prayer to thy deathless flame. 
From the Swedish of Verner von Heidenstam 

{Translated by Charles Wharton Stork) 

"GATHER US IN" 

Rend each man's temple veil and bid it fall, 
Gather our rival faiths within thy fold ! 

Gather us in, Thou Love that fiUest all ! 
That we may know that Thou hast been of old — 
Gather us in I 

Gather us in ! We worship only Thee ; 

In varied names we stretch a common hand ; 
In diverse forms a common soul we see; 

In many ships we seek one spirit-land — 
Gather us in I 

Each sees one color of Thy rainbow light. 
Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven; 

Thou art the fulness of our partial sight; 
We are not perfect till we find the seven — 
Gather us in I 

Thine is the mystic light great India craves. 
Thine is the Parsee's sin-destroying beam, 

Thine is the Buddhist's rest from tossing waves, 
Thine is the empire of vast China's dream — 
Gather us in I 

Thine is the Roman's strength without his pride. 
Thine is the Greek's glad world without its 
graves, 



156 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Thine is Judea's law with love beside, 
The truth that centers and the grace that 
saves — 

Gather us in I 

Some seek a Father in the' heavens above/ 

Some ask a human image to adore, 
Some crave a spirit vast as life and love: 
Within Thy mansions we have all and more - 
Gather us in ! 

George Matheson 



"DkW^ IN THE DESERT 

When the first opal presage of the morn 
Quickened the east, the good Merwan arose, 
And by his open tent-door knelt and prayed. 

Now in that pilgrim caravan was one 

Whose heart was heavy with dumb doubts, whose 

eyes 
Drew little balm from slumber. Up and down 
Night-long he paced the avenues of sand 
'Twixt tent and tent, and heard the jackals 

snarl. 
The camels moan for water. This one came 
On Merwan praying, and to him outcried — 
(The tortured spirit bursting its sealed fount 
As doth the brook on Damavend in spring) 
"How knowest thou that any Allah is?" 
Swift from the sand did Merwan lift his face, 
F4ung toward the east an arm of knotted bronze, 
And said, as upward shot a shaft of gold : 



IMMORTALITY 157 

"Dost need a torch to show to thee the dawn?" 
Then prayed again. 

"When on the desert's rim 
In sudden awful splendor stood the sun, 
Through all that caravan there was no knee 
But bowed to Allah. 

Clinton Scollard 

IMMORTALITY 

Two caterpillars crawling on a leaf, 

By some strange accident in contact came; 
Their conversation, passing all belief, 

Was that same argument, the very same, 
That has been "proed and conned,'* from man to 

man; 
Yea, ever since this wondrous world began. 
The ugly creatures. 

Deaf and dumb and blind, 
Devoid of features 
That adorn mankind, 
Were vain enough, in dull and worldly strife, 
To speculate upon a future life. 

The first was optimistic, full of hope — 
The second, quite dyspeptic, seemed to mope. 
Said number one, "I'm sure of our salvation." 
Said number two, "I'm sure of our damnation. 
Our ugly forms alone would seal our fates. 
And bar our entrance through the golden gates. 
Suppose that death should take us unawares. 
How Gould we ever climb the golden stairs? 
If maidens shun us as they pass us by. 
Would angels bid us welcome to the sky? 



158 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

I wonder what great crimes we have committed, 
That leave us so forlorn, so unpitied? 

Perhaps weVe been ungrateful, unforgiving, 

*Tis plain to me life is not worth the living." 
"Come, come, cheer up," the jovial one replied — 
"Let's take a look upon the other side: 

Suppose we cannot fly like moths and millers, 

Are we to blame for being caterpillars? 
Will that same God that doomed us crav/1 the earth, 
A prey to every bird that's given birth. 

Forgive our captor as he eats and sings. 

And damn poor us because we have no wings? 
If we can't skim the air, like owl or bat, 
The worm will turn for a' that." 

They argued through the Summer — Autumn 
nigh; 

The ugly things composed themselves to die — 
And so, to make their funeral quite complete. 
Each wrapped him in his little winding-sheet. 

The tangled web encompassed them full soon — 

Each for his coffin made him a cocoon. 
All through the Winter's chilling blasts they lay. 
Dead to the world, aye, dead as any human clay. 

Lo ! Spring comes forth with all her warmth and 
love; 

She brings sweet justice from the realms 
above — 
She breaks the chrysalis — she resurrects the 

dead — 
Two butterflies ascend, encircling her head. 

And so, this emblem shall forever be 

A sign of Immortality. 

Joseph Jefferson 



"NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE" i59 



THE WISH 

The wish, that of the living whole 
No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 

The likest God within the soul? 

Are God and Nature then at strife. 
That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems, 
So careless of the single life 

That I, considering everywhere 
Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear — 

I falter where I firmly trod. 

And falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God — 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

Tennyson 

"NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE" 

No coward soul is mine. 
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere; 

I see Heaven's glories shine, 
And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 



i6o SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

O God within my breast, 
Almighty, ever-present Deity! 

Life — that in me has rest, 
As I — undying Life — have power in Thee I 

Vain are the thousand creeds 
That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; 

Worthless as witherM weeds. 
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, 

To waken doubt in one 
Holding so fast by Thine infinity; 

So surely anchor'd on 
The steadfast rock of Immortality. 

With v/ide-embracing love 
Thy Spirit animates eternal years, 

Pervades and broods above. 
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears. 

Though earth and man were gone, 
And suns and universes cease to be, 

And Thou were left alone — 
Every existence would exist in Thee. 

There is not room for Death, 
Kor atom that his might could render void: 

Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, 
And what Thou art may never be destroyed. 

Emily Bronte 



THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION i6i 



THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION 

Loud mockers in the roaring street 
Say Christ is crucified again : 

Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet, 
Twiee broken His great heart in vain, 

I hear, and to myself I smile. 

For Christ talk« with me all the while. 

No angel now to roll the stone 
From off His unawaking sleep, 

In vain shall Mary watch alone. 
In vain the soldiers vigil keep. 

Yet while they deem my Lord is dead 
My eyes are on His shining head. 

Ah ! never more shall Mary hear 
That voice exceeding sweet and low 

Within the garden calling clear r 
Her Lord is gone, and she must go. 

Yet all the while my Lord I meet 
In every London lane and street. 

Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain. 
And Bartimeus still go blind; 

The healing hem shall ne'er again 
Be touchM by suffering humankind. 

Yet all the v/hile I see them rest, 
The poor and outcast, on His breast. 



i62 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

No more unto the stubborn heart 

With gentle knocking shall He plead, 

No more the mystic pity start, 
For Christ twice dead is dead indeed; 

So in the street I hear men say — 
Yet Christ is with me all the day. 

Richard Le GcUienne 



A CONCLUSION 

If all the dream-like things are vain, 
If all the strange delight and pain 

Of love and beauty cannot be 

The heirs of immortality, — • 
Then shall I worship all the more 
Those images I now adore. 

If all things perish, it were best 

To die with beauty, — lie at rest 
In her great drift of ruined roses. 
With lovely songs to have our closes, — 

Yea, as on some transcendent pjrre 

Of sandalwood, to pass in fire 
'Mid broken alabaster, whence 
Arise great clouds of frankincense. 

Carved ivory and sard, and robes 

Of purple dye, and magic globes 
Of burning crystal, scattered gems 
Like flowers, and holy diadems. 

Papyrus writ with perfect rimes. 

And lutes fulfilled of tender chimes, 
And lucid cups all scriptured round 
With slim, white, dancing gods vine-bound. 



THE WASHERWOMAN'S SONG 163 

And agate lamps, whence tongues of light 
Flare out into the endless night. 

Rachel Annand Taylor 



TEARS 

When I consider Life and its few years — 

A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; 

A call to battle, and the battle done 

Ere the last echo dies within our ears ; 

A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; 

The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; 

The burst of music down an unlistening street — 

I wonder at the idleness of tears. 

Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, 

Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep, 

By every cup of sorrow that ye had. 

Loose me from tears, and make me see aright 

How each hath back what once he stayed to v/eep : 

Eomer his sight, David his little lad ! 

Lizette Wood worth Reese 



THE WASHERWOMAN'S SONG 

In a very humble cot. 

In a rather quiet spot. 

In the suds and in the soap. 
Worked a woman full of hope; 

"Working, singing, all alone. 

In a sort of undertone: 

"With the Savior for a friend, 
He will keep me to the end.'* 



i64 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Sometimes happening along, 
I had heard the semi-song, 
And I often used to smile, 
More in sympathy than guile; 
But I never said a word 
In regard to what I heard. 
As she sang about her friend 
Who would keep her to the end. 

Not in sorrow nor in glee 
Workiag all day long was she, 
As her children, three or four. 
Played around her on the floor; 
But in monotones the song 
She was humming all day long: 
" With the Savior for a friend, 
He will keep me to the end." 

It*s a song I do not sing, 

For I scarce believe a thing 
Of the stories that are told 
Of the miracles of old ; 

But I know that her belief 

Is the anodyne of grief. 
And will always be a friend 
That will keep her to the end. 

Just a trifle lonesome she. 
Just as poor as poor could be; 
But her spirits alv/ays rose. 
Like the bubbles in the clothes. 
And, though widowed and alone. 
Cheered her with the monotone, 



WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS 165 

Of a Savior and a friend 

Who would keep her to the end. 

I have seen her nab and scrub, 
On the washboard in the tub, 
While the baby, sopped in suds, 
Rolled and tumbled in the duds; 
Or was paddling in the pools. 
With old scissors stuck in spools; 
She still humming of her friend 
Who would keep her to the end. 

Human hopes and human creeds 
Have their root in human needs ; 
And I should not wish to strip 
From that washerwoman's lip 
Any song that she can sing. 
Any hope that songs can bring; 
For the woman has a friend 
Who will keep her to the end. 

Eugene F, Ware 



« WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, 
NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING" 

It fortifies my soul to know 
That though I perish — Truth is so: 
That howsoe'er I stray and range — 
Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change. 
I steadier step when I recall 
That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall. 

Arthur Hugh Clough 



I 



1 66 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

PIPPA'S SONG 

The year *s at the spring 
And day's at the morn; 
Morning's at seven; 
The hillside's dew-pearled; 
The lark's on the wing; 
The snail's on the thorn: 
God's in His heaven — 
All 's right with the world ! 

Robert Browning 

CLEANTHES' HYMN 

Lead thou me, God, Law, Reason, Motion, Life, 
All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow : 
Lead me, for I will follow without strife. 
Or — if I strive, still must I blindly follow ! 

Clean thes the Stoic 

PRAYER OF A POET TO GOD 

Have mercy. Thou, upon my soul, 
Unclean against Thy flaming skies, 

Unchaste beside Thy golden stole. 
Have mercy Thou ! Let me arise 

Before Thy throne in perfect peace. 

Be pitiful, my soul release! 

I know that all my days have been 
Misspent in paths afar from Thee; 

I know mine eyes have quickly seen 

The things Thou wouldst not have me see. 

That through the thoughtless years I saw 

Uncounted scenes, but not Thy law. 



PRAYER OF A POET TO GOD 167 

Forgive the lies my tongue exclaimed, 
The heedless truths that slev/ the weak, 

Forgive the many faults I blamed. 
Not on myself, but on the meek. 

Forgive, Divine and Gracious God, 

The buds I broke upon Thy sod ! 

Amazing is Thy mercy. Lord ! 

Therefore remember not the times 
My kisses, like a poisoned sword. 

Killed innocence, awakened crimes; 
Forgive my passions uncontrolled. 
The years I wandered from Thy fold I 

My life on scarlet seas was tost, 
I swore to scorn Thy gift of grace, 

I gloried Thou shouldst deem me lost — 
Perhaps I njet Thee face to face? 

Perhaps Thy wings refreshed my brow 

The while I sealed with Vice a vow? 

I stood on mounts and sang a song 
In praise of those that hate Thy name, 

With laughing lips I did a wrong 

That shamed the very face of Shame. 

Thrice blessed be Thy pity, God, 

Else I should die beneath Thy rod I 

Thou gavest me a singing voice 
To fill the earth with loveliness; 

But I -^ it made my soul rejoice 

To make Thy children love Thee less, 

Thy charity is boundless wide, 

Forget, O Lord, my evil pride I 



i68 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

Have mercy, Thou, upon my soul 
Unclean against Thy stainless skies, 

Unchaste beside Thy golden stole. 

Have mercy. Thou ! My streaming eyes 

Reveal what hells lay in my heart 

The age I stood from Thee apart. 

Joseph Bernard Re thy 

EXILE FROM GOD 

I do not fear to lay my body down 

In death, to share 
The life of the dark earth and lose my own, 

If God is there. 

I have so loved all sense of Him, sweet might 

Of color and sound, — 
His tangible loveliness and living light j 

That robes me 'roimd. 

If to Hi>s heart in the hushed grave and dim 

We sink more near. 
It shall be well — living we rest in Him. 

Only I fear 

Lest from my God in lonely death I lapse, 

And the dumb clod 
Lose Him, — for God is life, and death, perhaps, 

Exile from God. 

John Hall Wheelock 



PASSING OF OLD TRINITY 169 

PASSING OF OLD TRINITY 
(Demolished seventy years ago) 

Farewell! Farewell! They^re falling fast. 

Pillar and arch and architrave; 
Yon aged pile, to me the last 
Sole record of the by-gone past, 

Is speeding to its grave: 
And thoughts from memory's fountain flow, 

(As one by one, like wedded hearts, 

Each rude and mouldering stone departs,) 
Of boyhood's happiness and woe, — 

Its sunshine and its shade : 
♦And though each ray of early gladness 
Comes mingled with the hues of sadness, 

I would not bid them fade. 
They come, as come the stars at night, t— 
Like fountains gushing into light — 
And close around my heart they twine. 
Like ivy round the mountain pine ! 
Yes, they are gone — the sunlight smiles 
All day upon its foot-worn aisles; 
Those foot-worn aisles, where oft have trod 
The humble worshipers of God, 
In times long past, when Freedom first 
From all the land in glory burst I 

The heroic few! From him whose sword 
Was wielded in his country's cause. 

To him who battled with his word, 
The bold expounder of her laws ! 

And they'are gone — gone like the lone 
Forgotten echoes of their tread; 



170 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

And from their niches now are gone 

The sculptured records of the dead! 
As now I gaze, my heart is stirred 

With music of another sphere I 
A low, sweet chime, which once was heard, 
Comes like the note of some wild bird 

Upon my listening ear — 
Recalling many a happy hour. 
Reviving many a v/ithered flower, 
"Whose bloom and beauty long have laid 
Within my sad heart's silent shade : 
Life's morning flowers ! that bud and blow 

And wither ere the sun hath kissed 
The dewdrops from their breasts of snow, 

Or dried the landscape's veil of mist! 

Yes! When that sweetly mingled chime 
Stole on my ear in boyhood's time. 
My glad heart drank the thrilling joy, 

Undreaming of its future pains — 
As spell-bound as the Theban boy 

Listening to Memnon's fabled strains! 

Farewell, old fane! And though, unsung 

By bards thy many glories fell. 
Though babbling fame had never rung 

Thy praises on his echoing bell — 
Who that hath seen, can e'er forget 

Thy grey old spire? — Who that hath knelt 

Within thy sacred aisles, nor felt 
Religion's self grow sweeter yet? 

Yes ! Though the decking hand of Time 
Glory to Greece's fanes hath given, 



MINE THE LIGHT 171 

That, from her old heroic clime, 

Point proudly to their native heaven ; 
Though Rome hath many a ruined pile 

To speak the glory of her land, 
And fair, by Egypt's sacred Nile, 

Her mouldering monuments may starid: 
The joy that swells the gazer's heart. 

The pride that sparkles in his eye. 
When pondering on these piles where art 

In crumbling majesty doth lie — 
Ne'er blended with them keener joy 
Than mine, when but a thoughtless boy 
I gazed with awe-struck, wondering eye, 
On thy old spire, my Trinity I 
And thou shalt live like words of truth, — 
Like golden monuments of youth — 
As on the lake's unrippled breast 
The mirrored mountain lies at rest, 
So shalt thou lie, till life depart, 
Mirrored for ages on my heart ! 

Anonymous 

"MINE THE LIGHT OF SETTING SUN'> 

" The haggard sky, the surf's dull roar, 
The midnight storm are mine no more; 
But mine the light of setting sun — 
The call of birds when day is done; 
The last sad gleam is loth to pass, 
It weeps upon the golden grass; | 
The sigh of leaves in evening air. 
The distant bell that calls to prayer 
And nothing from my spirit bars 
The benediction of the stars." 

William Winter 



172 ' SONGS OF CHALLENGE 



THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 

It singeth low in every heart, 

We hear it each and all — 
A song of those who answer not, 

However we may call. 
They throng the silence of the breast; 

We see them as of yore — 
The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, 

Who walk with us no more. 

More homelike seems the vast unknown, 

Since they have entered there; 
To follow them were not so hard. 

Wherever they may fare. 
They cannot be where God is not, 

On any sea or shore; 
Whatever betides, thy love abides. 

Our God for evermore ! 

Rev* John W, Chad wick 



"THERE IS NO DEATH" 

There is no death ! The stars go down 

To rise upon some fairer shore, 
And bright in heaven's jeweled crown 

They shine for evermore. 

There is no death I The dust we tread 

Shall change beneath the summer showers 

To golden grain or mellow fruit 
Or rainbow-tinted flowers. 



"THERE IS NO DEATH" 173 

The granite rocks disorganize 

To feed the hungry moss they bear; 

The forest leaves drink daily life 
From out the viewless air. 

There is no death ! The leaves may fall, 
The flowers may fade and pass away — • 

They only wait, through wintry hours, 
The coming of the May. 

There is no death I An angel form 

Walks o'er the earth with silent tread; 

He bears our best loved things away, 
And then we call them "dead." 

He leaves our hearts all desolate — 
He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers 5 

Transplanted into bliss, they now 
Adorn immortal bowers. 

The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones 
Made glad this scene of sin and strife, 

Sings now an everlasting song. 
Around the tree of life. 

Where'er He sees a smile too bright, 
Or heart too pure for taint and vice, 

He bears it to that world of light, 
To dwell in Paradise. 

Born unto that undying life. 

They leave us but to come again; 

With joy to welcome them — the same 
Except in sin and pain. 



174 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

And ever near us, though unseen. 
The dear immortal spirits tread; 

For all the boundless Universe 
Is life — there are no dead. 

John L. McCreery 

BEYOND 

When youthful faith hath fled — 
Of loving take thy leave ; 

Be constant to the dead — 
The dead cannot deceive. 

Sweet, modest flowers of Spring, 
How fleet your balmy day I 

And man's brief year can bring 
No secondary May: 

No earthly burst again 
Of gladness out of gloom. 

Fond hope and vision vain — 
Ungrateful to the tomb. 

But 't is an old belief 

That on some solemn shore, 

Beyond the sphere of grief. 

Dear friends shall meet once more ; 

— Beyond the sphere of Time, 
And Sin and Fate's control. 

Serene in endless prime 
Of body and of soul. 



SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL 175 

That creed I fain would keep, 

That hope I'll not forego; 
Eternal be the sleep, 

Unless to waken so. 

John Gibson Lockhart 



SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL 

Come said the Muse, 

Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, 

Sing me the universal. 

In this broad earth of ours. 

Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, 

Enclosed and safe within its central heart. 

Nestles the seed perfection. 

• • • 

And thou America, 

For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its 

reality, 
For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. 

Thou too surroundest all. 

Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too by 

pathways broad and new, 
To the ideal tendest. 

The measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs 
of the past. 

Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, 

Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, compre- 
hending all. 

All eligible to all. 



176 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 

All, all for immortality, 

Love like the light silently wrapping all, 

Nature's amelioration blessing all. 

The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and 

certain. 
Forms, objects, growths, himianities, to spiritual 

images ripening. 

Give me, O God, to sing that thought. 

Give me, give him or her I love, this quenchless 
faith. 

In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld, with- 
hold not from us, 

Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, 

Health, peace, salvation universal. 

Is it a dream? 

Nay but the lack of it the dream, 

And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream. 

And all the world a dream. 

Walt Whitman 



TO CAPTAIN DALE MABRY 

(The clothes were found burned from his body and the 
flesh from his fingers, but the fingers still grasped the 
wheel of the aircraft. — News Item. ) 

At the portal of bright Valhalla 
They bade a stranger stand. 
**And where is your dented armor? 
And where is your reeking brand? 
Was it some mighty battle, 
Where ye sloughed your body, then, 



TO CAPTAIN DALE MABRY 177 

That ye stand at the close-tiled gateway 
Of the Lodge of the Fighting Men?'V 

There came no word of answer 

From the soul besmirched with smoke, 

But, reining her rearing charger, 

The fierce-eyed Valkyr spoke: 

" Out of the whirling fury 

Of the scarlet flames I come; 

It was there that I found his spirit, 

And I bring his spirit home I 

** Over the dying Roma 

The roaring fire-cloud swept 

To the post in its blazing pathway; 

To the post that his spirit kept ; 

I charge you bid him welcome, f 

Kot for his sword-blade's steel. 

But the charred and twisted handclasps 

On the charred and twisted wheel I" 

At the portal of bright Valhalla 
The sentinel stands aside. 
And cries his name to the chamber. 
Where the souls of the brave abide; 
Their blades have flashed from their scab- 
bards, 
They have bidden a welcome high — 
The men who died in their courage — 
To the man who knew how to die. 

Frederic F. Van de Water 



INDEX OF AUTHORS 



Arnold, Edwin 59 

Arnold, Matthew 63 

Banks, G. Linnaeus 69 

Banning, Major Kendall 16, 141 

Beers, Henry A 76 

Bell, Jerome B 63 

Bradford, Gamaliel 53 

Bronson, Francis Woolsey 7 

Bronte, Emily 159 

Brown, Thomas Edv/ard 75 

Browning, Robert 8, 166 

Burnet, Dana 149 

Burr, Amelia Josephine 22, 35 

Bunoughs, John 48 

Burton, Sir Richard . 108 

C, G. B .80 

Carman, Bliss 44, 120 

Carruth, William Herbert 51 

Chadwick, Rev. Jolm W 172 

Clark, Badger 21 

Cleanthes the Stoic 166 

Clough, Arthur Hugh 90, 165 

Connell, Norreys, pseud. (Conal O'Riordan) ... 4 

Cory, William Johnson 91, 132 

Crosby, John Bemer 16 

Dobson, Austin 146 

Driscoll, Louise 55 



i8o INDEX OF AUTHORS 

Du Maurier, George 76 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 94 

Evans, Florence Wilkinson 131 

Fane, Violet 130 

Fisher, Stokely S 73 

Fitzgerald, Edward 97i 98 

G. B. C 80 

Glasgow, J. Scott 128 

Going, Charles Buxton 129 

Guiney, Louise Imogen 10 

Hall, Gertrude 149 

Hall, Sharlot M 58 

Heidenstam, Vomer von 154 

Henderson, Rose 85 

Henley, W. E 49 

Herbert, George 13 

Hodgson, Lieut. W. N 9 

Hort. Gertrude M 5 

Hovey, Richard 74 

Jackson, Helen Hunt 34 

Jefferson, Joseph 157 

Jones, Amanda T 135 

Jordan, Thomas 92 

Kester;i Paul 154 

Kiser, S. E 89 

Knibbs, Henry Herbert 15, 68, 117 

Lee-Hamilton, Eugene 94 

Le Gallienne, Richard 161 

Liddell, Catherine C 82 

Lockhart, John Gibson 174 



INDEX OF AUTHORS i8i 

Lowell, James Russell 3q 

Lytton, Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer (Owen Mere- 
dith, pseud.) 57> 103 

McCreery, John L 172 

Mackintosh, Charles Henry 92 

Malone, Walter 65 

Mangan, James Clarence 145 

Mann, Dorothea Lawrance 116 

Marquis, Don 78, 104 

Matheson, George 155 

Meredith, Owen 57j 103 

Mifflin, Lloyd 118 

Monkhouse, Cosmo 126 

Morris, Sir Lewis 45 

Myers, Frederic William Henry 69 

Neihardt, John G • 4» 87, 142 

Newbolt, Sir Henry 24 

Ogilvie, Will H 62, 100 

Omar Khayyam 97i 98 

O'Shaughnessy, Arthur 112 

O'Sheel, Shaemas 86 

O'Sullivan, Seumas 136 

Paine, Albert Bigelow . ; 114 

Parsons, Thomas William 143 

Paterson, Major A. B 113 

Percy, William Alexander loi 

Pulsifer, Harold Trowbridge 3 

Raleigh, Sir Walter 39 

Reese, Lizette Woodworth 163 

Rethy, Joseph Bernard 166 

Robinson, Edwin Arlington 26, 83 

Romaine, Harry 52 



i82 INDEX OF AUTHORS 

Rossetti, Christina Georgina 138 

Rydberg, Viktor n 

Scollard, Clinton 156 

Seitz, Don C 134 

Speyer, Leonora 49 

Stevenson, Robert Louis , 72, 137 

Stork, Charles Wharton , 11,30,154 

Story, William Wetmore 121 

Swain, John D 122 

Taylor, Rachel Annand 162 

Tennyson, Alfred 36, 159 

Thoreau, Henry David 53 

Thorley, Wilfrid 118 

Van de Water, Frederic F 7, 28, 42, in, 176 

Vedder, Elihu 119, 148 

Villon, Fran$;ois 118 

Ware, Eugene F 102, 163 

Watson, Rosamund Marriott 99 

Wharton, Edith 139 

Wheelock, John Hall 168 

Whitman, Walt 115, 151, 17s 

Wilson, John French 81 

Winter, William 74, 171 

Wordsworth, William 38, 89 



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